My name is Hank and this is my store. I opened the Pickin' Parlor in the spring of 1982 in the old barber shop on Depot Street, and I have been there ever since, along with about four hundred instruments, more strings than I can count, and a pot of coffee that is always on. If you've been in, you know all this. If you haven't, come on by, sit down on the bench and try something. Nobody here is going to follow you around or ask you to hurry up.

My nephew talked me into putting the store on the "World Wide Web" this summer, so here it is. I'm not much of a typist so bear with me. If you have a question about anything on this page, send me an e-mail and I'll answer it the same day if I can, or the next morning if I'm at the jam.

We are an acoustic store. I don't carry electric guitars, amplifiers or drums, and I don't plan to. There are plenty of places that do. What we do is flat-top guitars, mandolins, banjos, fiddles, dobros and the strings and books and picks that go with them, and we try to know something about every one of them.

Stock changes every week, especially the used instruments, so this is a general idea. If you are looking for something in particular, e-mail me and I'll tell you what's hanging on the wall right now.

Every instrument that leaves this store gets a setup first: the action checked, the nut slots looked at, the intonation set and a fresh set of strings. A cheap guitar that plays right beats an expensive one that doesn't, and a beginner who fights his instrument quits. I've seen it too many times.

Strings are the bread and butter of a store like this. I keep phosphor bronze and 80/20 bronze guitar sets in every gauge, nylon classical sets, mandolin sets (loop end), banjo sets, fiddle strings (steel and synthetic core) and single strings when you break just the one. Buy three sets and the fourth is half price, and that's every day, not a sale.

We also have picks (flatpicks, thumbpicks, fingerpicks, in all thicknesses), capos, straps, tuners, pitch pipes, humidifiers (get one before winter, please), stands, cases, gig bags, polish and string winders. If you play it, we probably have what goes with it.

Lessons are $12 per half hour, paid by the month, in the two lesson rooms in the back. We have local teachers for guitar (flatpicking, fingerstyle and beginners of all ages), mandolin, bluegrass and clawhammer banjo, fiddle and dobro. They are working players from right around here and every one of them is patient with beginners, because I wouldn't have them otherwise.

Afternoons and evenings fill up fast in the fall once school starts. If you want a slot after 4 o'clock, come in and get on the calendar. Saturday mornings are open too, but the jam starts at 1 and the teachers usually want to be in on it.

You don't have to buy your instrument here to take lessons here. You can also rent a student guitar, fiddle or mandolin by the month if you aren't sure the young one will stick with it, and if you buy later, the rent you've paid comes off the price.

Every Saturday at 1:00 p.m., rain or shine, we push the guitar racks against the wall, set out the folding chairs and have a jam. It's been going on nearly as long as the store has. Some Saturdays it's six of us, some Saturdays it's thirty and they spill out onto the sidewalk. Bluegrass and old-time mostly, with some gospel and a country song or two when somebody calls one.

Jam rules, such as they are:

• Everybody who wants a turn to call a tune gets one. We go around the circle.
• Play at the level of the tune. If a beginner calls "Wildwood Flower" we play it at a beginner's speed.
• If you don't know it, play quiet and listen. That's how everybody here learned.
• Tune up before you sit down. There's a tuner on the counter.
• Coffee is free. The cookies are whatever somebody brought.

New pickers are always welcome, and so are listeners. You don't have to be good. You just have to show up. Some of the best players I know started in that circle not knowing a G chord.

I do setups, string changes, bridge pin and nut work, and small stuff at the counter while you wait or the same day. For anything bigger (cracks, neck resets, refrets, a fiddle that needs a new sound post or bass bar) we send it out to a repairman I've trusted for fifteen years. He picks up and drops off on Tuesdays, so figure two to three weeks on a big job, longer in December. I'll give you an estimate before anything gets done and I'll call you if it changes.

A word on humidity: more cracked tops come in during January than the rest of the year put together. Furnace heat dries a guitar out. A five-dollar humidifier in the case saves a two-hundred-dollar repair. End of sermon.

Yes, we do layaway, and this time of year that's mostly Christmas. Put 20% down on any instrument in the store and I'll tag it and hang it in the back room with your name on it. Pay on it whenever you come in. Pay it off by December 18 and it goes home for Christmas morning. No fees, no interest, and if you change your mind before then you get your money back, less a $10 restocking charge. If you want a bow put on it, ask my wife, not me.

A guitar, a fiddle or a mandolin under the tree is about the best present I know of, and I'm not just saying that because I sell them. Well, partly.

We're on Depot Street, half a block down from the courthouse square, in the brick building with the green awning and the guitar painted on the window. Park on the street or behind the building.

Phone: (555) 555-0182
E-mail: [email protected]

Starting in October we'll be open until 8:00 on Thursday nights through Christmas.