Musical Instrument Store Near Me on Santa Monica's Pico Boulevard: McCabe's Guitar Shop

McCabe's Guitar Shop, at 3101 Pico Blvd in Santa Monica, has sold stringed instruments since 1958 and still welcomes droppers-by who only want to poke around. Banjos, mandolins, hammered dulcimers and boutique flat-tops share the walls, luthiers handle repairs, and teachers work in small lesson rooms upstairs. A Westside search for a musical instrument store near me lands on a shop that is also where Ry Cooder perfected his licks after school and where Bob Dylan once showed up to study a blues tune.

The founder was not a music retailer by training. LAist's May 2026 profile describes Gerald McCabe as a furniture maker who dabbled in guitar repairs when he opened the business in 1958. It began as a place to browse guitars and accessories, and during the folk boom of the sixties it turned into a hangout where musicians gathered for jam sessions long before anyone thought of selling concert tickets.

One of those young regulars was Bob Riskin, who started working there as a teenager in the early 1960s and eventually became the owner. He moved the business to its third and current home on Pico. When Riskin retired during the pandemic, loyal customers mailed cards and sent flowers begging the shop not to close. His daughter Nora and her husband, Walt McGraw, took over instead, and Walt told LAist that selling or closing never seemed like an option.

Concerts arrived by accident. In 1969 a planned show by Mike Seeger and Elizabeth Cotten at UCLA's Royce Hall fell through, and Seeger came to the shop asking what to do. The staff told him to just play there. Because there was no permit for live music, author Peter Lesser told LAist, blankets were hung over the windows so nobody outside could see the performance.

A month later Ramblin' Jack Elliott was stuck in Los Angeles after his car broke down and played two nights to pay for a new transmission, with Arlo Guthrie joining him on the second. By the end of that year the shop was advertising shows. In the mid-1970s Takoma Records kept offices two doors east and ran cables from the sound booth to its studio, and those live master tapes now sit in a collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acoustic players come for the flat-tops. A spring 2026 listing of steel-string guitars on the shop's own site ran from Martin and Collings to Bourgeois, BSG and a Froggy Bottom, which puts a workhorse mahogany Martin 000-15 and an ornate Bourgeois 00-Style 42 within the same arm's reach. A first-time visitor quoted by LAist summed up the mood well, admiring the Martins and Collings while admitting he could not afford most of them.

The stock goes far beyond guitars. The shop's own description lists ukuleles, banjos, mandolins, fiddles, bouzoukis, sitars, ouds, ethnic percussion and dulcimers, both hammered and plucked, plus electrics, amps and accessories. The used section is small and odd in the best way, with a Favilla soprano from the 1950s and a Ventura Bruno bowlback listed this year. Almost every instrument sold comes with an in-house three-year warranty covering set-ups and adjustments, plus a three-year trade-up option worth 70 percent.

Repairs are a walk-in affair. The homepage boasts of having the best luthiers west of the Mississippi, probably east too, and invites anyone whose guitar, uke or dulcimer is buzzing or has suffered injury or neglect to bring it by. Appointments are not necessary, which makes the counter a sensible first stop for a family instrument that has spent years in a closet.

Lessons run deep here too. Kit Alderson has taught autoharp at McCabe's since 1970 and was a founding member of the Stone Poneys, Linda Ronstadt's original band. David Ellis has taught guitar for more than thirty years. LAist reports that instructors coached Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix for Walk the Line, and that Dylan came to work through a Blind Lemon Jefferson tune with teacher Fran Banish in an upstairs room.

The shop is open daily from 11 am to 7 pm, rain or shine, except on New Year's Day, Easter Sunday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Concerts happen just about every weekend, according to the homepage, so a weekday afternoon is the better pick for unhurried browsing.

Evenings change the room completely. On show nights, LAist notes, concertgoers must pass through the shop to reach the back room, weaving past walls of guitars, mandolins, ukuleles and banjos. Coming a little early is the easiest way to browse the walls before the music starts. The homepage also says rentals are currently unavailable, so plan on buying rather than borrowing an instrument for a trial run.

The concert space is a 150-seat back room with folding chairs and no bar. LAist described a crowd so quiet that every picked note rings out, and the concert page strictly prohibits photographs and all other recording during shows. Robbie Fulks guessed he had played the room 27 times, and the upstairs hallway by the lesson rooms is lined with photos of the giants who performed there, Doc Watson and Norman Blake among them.

Fingerstylists, songwriters and old-time bands keep the autumn calendar busy, and Holly Near's own tour page lists two October nights in the room with Jan Martinelli, Tammy Hall and emma's revolution. Tickets can only be bought through the shop's online store, and all sales are final. Lesser's 2026 book, Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop, collects interviews with some 80 people for anyone who wants the full backstory.

Residential side streets run north and south of this stretch of Pico, which suits a shop that has always preferred regulars to crowds. A short ride west sits Virginia Avenue Park, on Pico at Cloverfield, home to the Pico Library, a playground and basketball courts. On Saturdays the city's Pico farmers market sets up in front of the library with a different band each week, a bakery, a coffee cart and a few local restaurants.

Getting here without a car is simple. Big Blue Bus runs Route 7, Rapid 7 and Express 7 along the Pico corridor, and the city says the three together give weekday service every ten minutes. Drivers should know that metered spaces on Pico are free after 6 pm and on Sundays, that the residential side streets are permit parking only at night, and that the lot behind U.S. Bank takes parkers after 6 pm, seven nights a week.