If you’re a musician who lives in or around Concord, you’re probably familiar with Strings & Things Music Store, the shop on South Main Street that sells all kinds of instruments (not just stringed ones) and gives lessons. While many smaller stores – pretty much anything not called Guitar Center – tend to have limited selections and mostly specialize in selling strings and picks, Strings & Things is really a full-service shop with some world-class instruments – and musicians working there.
Long an official dealer of Fender products, a name synonymous with quality and respectablitiy in the music world, Strings & Things is now also an official dealer of Suhr and Nash guitars, two American companies that make high-end, professional-grade instruments.
While you can get a Fender pretty much anywhere, Nash and Suhrs are only sold through official dealers, and Strings & Things happens to be the only Nash dealer in northern New England and the largest Suhr dealer in all of New England. That means Strings & Things has been put on the map because of their commitment to carrying these very fine manufacturers.
“Suhr and Nash open up new avenues for us,” said Brad Myrick, operations manager at Strings & Things. “Over the last couple years we’ve been getting into E-commerce,” selling products online and shipping them all over the world. Myrick is also a touring professional musicians with connections all over the world. Because of these connections, Strings & Things has made sales to places as far away as Italy. And it’s not just exporting the store does, either.
“We have people come from Connecticut, from Ontario, Canada,” Myrick said. Because dealers of Nash and Suhr products are so few and far between, it makes the few places that do sell them destinations for serious musicians.
If you’ve never heard of either brand, that’s okay – these are boutique companies that are not available in most stores. Nash specializes in making “aged” instruments, guitars and basses that are made brand new but are meant to look like they could be 50 years old, with worn finish, rusted hardware and little scratches and nicks here and there. The guitars are modeled after classic Fender designs.
Suhr also has many Fender-inspired models, but this company doesn’t do the aging thing. Instead, Suhr produces immaculate, sharp guitars that have all the amenities a modern player needs, from top-notch electronics to the sturdiest hardware.
Apart from selling instruments and giving lessons, the shop also puts on some free clinics from time to time, with two coming up in the near future.
On Sunday, March 10, the store will host a Joe Gattuso guitar clinic at 2 p.m. Gattuso is one of the most respected guitarists in New England. He’s been teaching music for nearly four decades and has been a staple of the Strings & Things instructional staff for the majority of that time. He’ll be joined by Myrick, his former student, and the two will go over some techniques and take questions and requests from the audience.
On April 7 at 2 p.m., there will be a guitar repair clinic with the shop’s repair technician, Erik Hodges. Hodges will go over some common repair issues, offer tips on how people can work on their own instruments and show off some of the services the store offers. Audience participation is encouraged.
