Musical Instrument Store Near Me in Santa Monica: Truetone Music

Truetone Music, at 1102 Broadway, Santa Monica, CA 90401, is the guitar shop that Santa Monica players keep returning to, now in a bigger building a few blocks from its old Santa Monica Boulevard home. The new space has an acoustic room, soundproof amp rooms and a pedal wall of more than 800 effects. If you typed musical instrument store near me somewhere between the beach and Lincoln Boulevard, this is where a quick string run can easily turn into an afternoon.

Truetone grew out of the repair bench. Co-owner Paul Flynn, originally from Silver Spring, Maryland, worked as a guitar repairman at Chuck Levin's Music Center in Wheaton, according to the biography on his old band NotEven's site. On episode fifteen of the Conduit Music Podcast, Flynn described starting Truetone with Ken Daniels in 1999, and that bio lists him as co-owner and head of the repair shop.

His partner Sunir Patel handles the inventory, which mixes new stock with trade-ins, consignments and vintage finds. The podcast frames the store as run by musicians, for musicians, with a habit of treating regulars like celebrities and celebrities like regulars. Over the years the counter has seen Prince, Andy Summers, Billy Gibbons, Tenacious D, Tom Petty and Steely Dan, and Flynn himself has toured as a guitar tech for Ry Cooder.

For a quarter century the shop sat on Santa Monica Boulevard. In a blog post first written in October 2023, the staff announced the move and added a December update that they had officially taken over 1102 Broadway. During the build-out, Truetone Takeout kept a fully working back end running for online and local customers while the showroom floor was still being finished. The staff also promised that sound pollution would be cut down dramatically compared to the old store.

The reopening note reads like a wish list finally granted. It lists an expanded electric guitar display, a dedicated acoustic room, a soundproof amp area with five separate rooms including three isolated tryout booths, an expanded repair shop and an office studio for photo and video work. The owners wrote that they were fully set on staying in Santa Monica, and landing just a few blocks from the old corner was a bonus.

The most unusual reason to stop in is the Ry Cooder Collection. The shop explains that Cooder, a prolific collector, decided to part with some instruments after moving to a new home, and Truetone has been selling them one by one. Still listed this month are a 1907 Larson Brothers Dyer Symphony Style 5 harp guitar, a 1955 tweed Fender Twin and a white 1962 National Val-Pro 85 bass.

Cooder is not the only musician whose gear has passed through here. The website keeps separate artist pages for Colin Hay, Brian Ray, John Waite and Jeffrey Foskett, each with instruments that carry a performing history. Ask at the counter whether any of these pieces are on the floor or in the back, because a harp guitar, with its extra unfretted bass strings, is something most players have never actually held.

New stock leans toward the instruments that serious players chase. The electric racks include Fender Custom Shop, Gibson Custom, Gretsch Custom Shop, PRS, Music Man and Reverend, alongside less common names such as Mayones, Fano, Novo and Powers Electric. In the acoustic room you will find Martin, Taylor and Yamaha next to Veillette, and the amp rooms hold Carr, Matchless, Magnatone, Fryette and Orange. Players outside the six-string world can look through banjos, mandolins, resonators and ukuleles, plus Hofner and Sterling basses.

The pedal display is the part people photograph. Strymon, EarthQuaker Devices, JHS, Walrus Audio, Meris and ThorpyFX sit beside older oddities, and recent used listings included a 1979 MXR Dyna Comp and a 1975 Mu-Tron Phasor II. For players building a rig, the custom pedalboard service covers signal chain, gain staging, buffers and MIDI programming, finished with soldered cabling and tidy cable management.

Flynn's repair department handles acoustic and electric setups, refrets and fret dressing, nut and saddle carving, electronic modifications and structural work such as headstock breaks, cracks and bridge reglues. The bench also builds pedalboards and does specialized tube amp repair, so a noisy Fender combo and a scratchy pickup selector can go in on the same visit. A request form on the website lets you describe the problem before you carry the case in.

Lessons run with Shawn Fleming, who has more than twenty years of teaching experience and performs in jazz, rock, blues, R&B and classical settings. His posted schedule is Tuesday through Thursday from 11 am to 9 pm and Friday and Saturday from 11 am to 7 pm. A single one-hour lesson costs $80, a half-hour lesson is $45, and a pack of four one-hour lessons is $280.

The new layout changes how a visit feels. Because the amp rooms are soundproofed and the acoustic room is separate, nobody has to shout over a cranked combo while someone else compares two dreadnoughts. Ask a staff member to set up the amp you want in a tryout booth, tell them the guitar you are curious about, and give them a minute to tune and plug in before you start playing.

Arriving soon after the 11 am opening on a weekday gives you the best shot at an unhurried conversation about a setup or a trade. Saturday is the only weekend day the doors open, so plan a longer session with a vintage amp for a weekday if you can. Southern California sellers can bring trades and consignments in person, while anyone farther away is asked to write to mike@truetonemusic.com before shipping anything.

Truetone is open Monday through Saturday from 11 am to 7 pm and closed Sunday. Drivers get a rare Santa Monica perk, since the building comes with nineteen reserved parking spots behind it. Riders on the Metro E Line can get off at Downtown Santa Monica Station and walk about seven blocks east along Broadway.

That walk passes close to the Third Street Promenade, the pedestrian street that has been the heart of downtown Santa Monica since the late 1880s, and a good place to browse before or after your session. For lunch, Bay Cities Italian Deli and Bakery on Lincoln Boulevard is a few minutes away on foot, and an Italian sub eaten on the curb makes a fine reward after trying out vintage amps.