Best of Toronto
The Best Musical Instrument Stores in Toronto
The best musical instrument stores in Toronto underline a fact that's too often ignored when we try to sing the city's praises - that this is a musician's city, with a reputation that compares honourably with Chicago or San Francisco, and fitfully tugs on the hem of New York or L.A. You can find almost everything here, new or used, with the used market an ongoing testament to generations of musicians acquiring and shedding instruments, at the whims of fortune and taste.
The Church Street pawn strip's days are waning, but the city's wealth of music stores have instruments for almost anyone's wallet, and some of these shops give a sense of being curated as much as they're stocked. As voted by our readers, this cross-section of the city's music shops would equip everything from a string quartet to a bluegrass group to a black metal band.
Here are the 15 best musical instrument stores in Toronto.
Steve's Music
If musical instrument shops were music festivals, Steve’s would be Monsters Of Rock. This Queen West institution is cavernous, guitars hanging in ranks like shiny, multicoloured bats, and amps of every size and wattage squatting beneath them like stalagmites. There are rooms for acoustic instruments, keyboards, drums, studio hardware and P.A.s, and even a little annex at the back for DJ gear, but at its heart lies the wild, shredding beat of a guitar solo - turned up to eleven, naturally. More »
Long & McQuade
And if Steve’s is stadium rock, Long & McQuade is a JVC Jazz Festival, with a little bit of High Voltage mixed in. Over fifty years old, L&M has branches all over the country, but its Bloor Street store is the mothership, sprawling over most of a city block, with a storefront for everything you need, and a famously generous store credit policy that’s allowed generations of musicians to play while they pay off their instrument in monthly installments. More »
Paul's Boutique
Working the rock festival metaphor one more step would make this tiny but packed Kensington shop Bonnaroo - the sort of place you go to equip your prog-folk math rock jam band. The ghost of Church St. pawn shop legend Richmond’s Trading Post has returned to life here with a vengeance, in the front room, full of gently abused amps and affordable axes, and the keyboard-lined back room. More »
Moog Audio
Fifteen years ago, I would have predicted that every music shop would have looked like Moog Audio. Right now, it’s the only purely digital age store in the city, selling vinyl and DJ discs alongside turntables and studio gear for the “made it on my laptop” artists out there. There are a few (pricey) amps at the front of the store, and a scant handful of guitars, which might be, to my ancient eyes, an admission that you can’t sample everything. More »
Capsule Music
With a priceless view across Queen to Trinity Bellwoods Park, Capsule is a temple of twang – three cramped rooms loaded to the ceiling with guitars with f-holes or candy-apple race car finishes, and amps in battered tweed. Old classics and new retro recreations hang side by side, the gaps filled with music memorabilia from the collection of Capsule’s co-owners, twin brothers Mark and Peter Kesper. More »
The Twelfth Fret
Walking deeper into this Danforth shop is a trip back in time, as the electric instruments give way to acoustic guitars, then dobros, lap steels, banjos, bouzoukis, dulcimers and mandolins. The whole store is a hundred hoe-downs waiting to happen, with an inventory that should help Toronto if it decides to re-vamp its image as Nashville North. More »
Remenyi House of Music
Located in the city’s musical sweet spot, Remenyi stares the Royal Conservatory of Music in the face across Bloor Street, so it’s no surprise that it caters to a more classically-oriented customer, with a respectable selection of guitars, a serious string department, and lots of pianos. The store, opened here in 1959 after a family business was taken over by Hungary’s communist government, is the exclusive Steinway dealer for southwest Ontario, which is a big stinking deal in the world of expensive pianos. More »
The Sound Post
An old house, tucked behind the hospitals, university and government buildings of the Discovery District, is a one-stop shop for string players. Catering to teachers, students, schools, professionals and serious amateurs, it features two floors of showrooms and repair shops over a basement full of sheet music, one of the largest selections in North America. More »
The Academy of Music
Every neighbourhood used to have a store like this – a humble but comprehensive selection of guitars, pianos, clarinets, saxes and recorders, priced to sell, with classrooms in the back or upstairs where budding virtuosi learned to wrap their fingers around Paderewski or “Lady of Spain.” This one persists, on the College strip no less, where it’ll be of some use to all the young families spending serious coin for a home near Bar Italia and Sam James. More »
George Heinl and Co.
The walls of the main floor showroom are covered with signed pictures going back decades – a testament to the loyalty professional customers have for this stringed instrument institution, open since 1926 and the place to go if your cherished violin, viola, cello or double bass suffers a mishap. More »
Robert Lowrey Piano Experts
You’ll see Lowrey’s name on the side of grand pianos rented for professional recitals all over the city – one afternoon when I wandered the upstairs showrooms, the nine-and-a-half foot long Bösendorfer grand was away at a Ben Heppner recital. You can spend a fortune here if you want – I’d recommend the Porsche-designed Bösendorfer if you want to really impress - a steal at just $156,000 – but you can also pick up a digital piano for your apartment in the new Roland showroom. More »
Six String Garage
Meiron Blackstien opened his Parkdale guitar shop in May, where he sells a modest selection of mostly affordable instruments up front, services and builds guitars in the back, and hosts classes in the basement on weekends when he isn’t playing stand-up bass with rockabilly trio Christian D and the Hangovers. On the day I visited he was eager to show off his recent projects, which included a Gretsch/Telecaster bastard child finished in a custom car colour, and a Jack Daniels bass clearly meant for a Michael Anthony fan. More »
Ring Music
Ring is a concise guitar shopping experience for serious players impatient with endless walls of instruments. The chaff-free selection is boiled down to the basics – playable models by big brands like Fender, Martin and Gretsch hanging next to used gems, with the amps to match and priced to sell. It’s the Cliff’s Notes of music stores, albeit one intent on not insulting your intelligence or taste. More »
Gary Armstrong Woodwinds
In business for 35 years at locations all over the west end, Armstrong arrived in Parkdale a few years ago where he sells mostly clarinets and oboes, but services virtually any woodwind. The 3,000-plus customers in his database include many of the city’s top professionals, like jazz saxophonist Jane Bunnett, who took Armstrong to Cuba a few years ago where he donated his labour servicing students’ battered instruments. More »
Musideum
With its careful displays and dramatic lighting, it’s easy to forget that this is a store, and that the exotic instruments – kotos and koras, shenais, santurs, tablas, hurdy-gurdies, zithers and shofars – are for sale. Most people wouldn’t know how to pick up many of these instruments, never mind play them, but the mind practically swims with possibilities as you stand amidst all this wood, skin, bone and metal. If you’re feeling timid, there’s a $35 build-your-own guitar kit. More »
Discussion
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There's also "Saved By Technology", which is a great spot too. And they've been around almost as long as synths and samplers have been.
Here's their site (but BTW, the store is better then their website is):
www.savedbytechnology.com
http://www.clubbass.ca/
Fantastic.
As for the Moog staff I disagree. I think it's hard these days to strike the right balance because people are tired of over bearing staff these days. Moog has the best gear in my opinion. The essential production and dj gear but then they also have the boutique. If I'm not walking out with a toy I'm leaving with a new CD from slinky usually
http://www.cosmomusic.ca
not to be overlooked, says i
Why does it really matter if a particular store is ranked #1? I go to L&M for winds, keyboards and PA rentals, Gary Armstrong for maintaining my Buffet R13 Vintage, Remenyi for strings, Sound Post for string rentals, and sometimes I drop by Steve's, St. John's and Harknett. Music's supposed to keep your mind open, not close them. $5 says those negative posters support Rob Ford.
We all have our preferences, but as long as they're helping us make music, who cares.
I often visit Moog with my partner who ambles around trying not to look too bored while I look at gear. While it's pretty rare that anyone asks if any help is needed, invariably if someone gets the staffs attention it's my bored boyfriend. These guys really can't fathom that women might make music too?
That said, I've had GREAT experiences in Montreal where they seem thrilled to help a lady out.
Also, the way a lot of music stores treat lady customers is one of my biggest pet peeves. I recently went into a large music store, and left really annoyed. First, while we were looking at a new Roland synth, the salesman came up and said, "Pretty interesting, eh?" in a way that you might talk to a 5 year old. Then, while looking at mixing boards and recording gear, another one says, "You girls are singers, yeah? Come check out the nice microphones we have." Yes, I'm a singer. I'm also a recording engineer and electronic music-maker. BLARGH.
Remenyi isn't helping anyone in anything, they're here to SELL. Harps aren't cheap and shopping for them should be like shopping for an investment, not a pair of shoes.
And Steve's? Most overrated store in the city. The staff are way to cool for school, and I find generally lacking in knowledge. Give me L&M over those guys any day.
Not to be a PC-thug but santurs, tabla and shenais are pretty far from "exotic" if you're part of sizeable South Asian community in Toronto (and it depends on the sort of santur, too... if you're Iranian they may be rather "mundane" to you as well.)
The thing is "intriguingly unusual or different; excitingly strange" to WHOM?
As for my allusion to Ford, I was just saying that Ford had people incensed about his use of a similarly loaded word: Oriental. It basically just means "eastern" too but has a really fraught history.
But I'm confident that almost everything in the Musideum would seem "exotic" - regardless of your definition - to most people, including me, a (bad) guitarist who's spent many years listening to Arabic taqsim, but probably also to a lot of second and third-generation people from South Asian or Middle Eastern backgrounds, many of whom have grown up listening to techno or metal. Even Bollywood uses sampled sitars and programmed tablas these days.
I know what you mean too that you don't actually get a chance to see all of that awesome gear in one place usually. It is a pretty unfamiliar sight in that regard too...
I guess it's interesting how for some of the aforementioned second-gen kids growing up on metal that given their own contexts that that metal & techno music, while being familiar amongst peers is perhaps in it's own way "exotic" to them. And returning to your earlier remark, putting anglo-european instruments from "our" folk 'past' and Jewish instruments, only upholds the fraught image of exoticism, as it takes antiquated stuff from "our" past and places it alongside instruments that are still part of a living tradition: Indian classical music, Iranian classical music.
And this is what I'm driving at, I'm still convinced that the word exotic, because of what it has become creates a slippery slope...
And yes I'm really happy, Mr. Tunes that it made it on the list too and that readers of BlogTO are taking note! But... I never said someone is a foe to "world music"... There's another questionable term right there, but I'm not interested in starting a massive debate here.
STEVE'S = jerks. basically the WalMart of music shops
CAPSULE = jerks. but nice guitars there.
MOOG = ???
PAUL'S BOUTIQUE = 2nd fav.
@ REGINA: I have to ask about your hate because Remyni is here only to sell. Remenyi and every other place here is a store. Of course they're here to sell, that's their entire reason for existing.
I love Snider's, they give great lessons and the staff are always so helpful. They sell instruments too, but maybe not as much as these other stores so I guess that's why they weren't on this list. They have a huge collection of music books too.
its also pathetic that Toronto, being the music industry capital of canada, (even north america in some respects), and there is no store with a good selection of in store pro audio gear, especially decent quality microphones and outboard gear etc... (neumann, cranesong, neve, Manley, some vintage gear, and TAPE! nobody has that stuff anymore! other than Tele-Tech in Markham, i love that store, and they have amazing selection and amazing prices)