The high-end acoustic room at Carter Vintage Guitars in Nashville is lined with instruments whose histories span decades and centuries, with price tags that also have a lot of zeros in them. Musicians around the world wish they could spend time here, and the guitar store gives them a way to do so virtually. On a recent morning, the progressive string band Troubadour Blue performed their song “Alabama Angel” for a video crew and a small audience, using instruments from the collection. About two weeks later, the video dropped on Carter’s YouTube channel, delivering Troubadour Blue to the world, while inviting the world into the inner sanctum of the legendary Music City guitar dealer.
When Walter and Christie Carter opened the shop bearing their name in 2012, it was huge news in the antique guitar world. Both had spent years as expert dealers and appraisers at the world-famous Gruhn Guitars, which did business downtown on and near Broadway from 1970 until its own move to Eighth Ave. in 2013. Walter literally wrote the books on vintage guitars, including histories of Martin and Gibson, and he’s lent his expertise as an appraiser to the PBS series “Antiques Roadshow.” Walter and Christie brought all they knew to their own business on Eighth Ave. South, just next to the famous Arnold’s meat-and-three. When they finally outgrew the space and sought a buyer for the business, a new partnership was ready to take it on.
Kim Sherman became a respected guitar seller through her decades with Cotten Music, located first in Hillsboro Village and then in the emerging Wedgewood Houston district. A customer introduced her to Ben Montague, CEO of The North American Guitar, a UK company with significant investment behind it. They forged a partnership that in turn acquired Carter Vintage, with a vision to preserve and expand the legacy business.
“I always say that your friends, the guitars, your pets, books, they find you when you need them,” Sherman said during a recent tour of the new facility. “And we found each other at a time (when) we were kind of looking for something, and it worked where we could partner.”
TNAG and Cotten merged just in time for the world to fall apart in 2020. The partners managed to keep things afloat during Covid, then joined with CVG in 2022, creating the current dealership and consignment powerhouse. The Carters remained on board for about a year and a half, and their influence saturates the shop that still bears their name. It’s a name that carries weight in Nashville, and that’s a responsibility no one in the store takes lightly. “We tried to, first of all, pay an homage to every single thing that they built,” Montague said. “And that is literally in the DNA of everything that we do here.”
Aiding in the continuity, CVG only had to move about 300 feet - across Eighth Ave. South and into the old brick Gulch building that once housed the Downtown Antiques Mall. Visitors encounter a fresh version of the musical murals that adorned the old building. Painter Brian Law adapted his own designs, including a graceful portrait of country guitar pioneer Mother Maybelle Carter (no relation), and his work is inside the dealership as well. The place is strikingly large at 12,500 square feet, about 50% bigger than the original location, yet it will give long-time customers a sense of deja vu.
The doors have the same guitar-shaped handles. The lobby/gallery feels the same, with its counters for strings and t-shirts. And inside, architect Paul Boulifard (Sherman’s husband) tried to match the layout of the former home. “We took the same shelving, the same counters,” Montague said. “We really wanted to make sure that when people came to Carter's, the new version, that they felt that it was a home (away) from home, and that it didn't feel that it was a too far a distance from what it used to be.”
In addition to the physical similarities, the shop’s concierge-level customer service also moved to the new location. “It's important to us that no matter how big it gets, it still feels like the small shop,” Sherman said. “It's a big store experience, but you still want to feel that you have a connection to someone there. They know who you are. They're paying attention to you. We just want folks to feel comfortable and heard when they come here.”
The store handles a lot of traffic, and boasts a layout designed to please not only paying customers, but browsers as well. “Sometimes you have four or five hundred people come through the doors on a weekend,” Montague said. “If you got groups of 5 to 10, there's probably only two people that are actually buying guitars. And so we want to make sure that other customers get to walk around and enjoy the space.”
The massive showroom glows with natural light, illuminating the curves and grain of each of the hundreds of instruments on display. Two smaller chambers, the high-end acoustic room and “The Vault,” hold treasures guitar lovers won’t find anywhere else. The Vault serves as a boutique within the shop. It’s a shrine packed with holy grail guitars musicians may have never imagined they would see, much less touch, including instruments with impressive provenance and new, old stock guitars waiting for their first owners.
Because not every guitar enthusiast can visit Nashville to experience the shop in person, CVG relies in part on video to share their inventory. The store’s social media presence entices as entertainment, but also functions as a sales tool. In addition to full-song performances like that from Troubadour Blue, dextrous performers like Trey Hensley (who appears in a handful of videos) play showy demos to give guitars a chance to shine. It’s a win/win situation — the artist gets some promo while playing a beautiful instrument, and Carter gets to show an audience of potential customers how the guitar comes to life. For someone on the fence about investing thousands in a vintage guitar, hearing what it sounds like in the hands of Marcus King or Billy Strings might help them pull the trigger. With 125k subscribers on YouTube and 160k on Instagram, music lovers around the world are drawn a little closer to Nashville.
Hensley has played the guitar most of his life, but the inventory at CVG still excites him. He described his first visit to the store as “a very Nashville day,” starting with a John Prine encounter at Arnold’s. “Then I walked into Carter's and talked to Steve Earle for a long time, and a couple of guys from the Doobie Brothers were in there,” Hensley said. “It's just such a cool place, and everybody is kind of a kid in a candy store. That's pretty Nashville to get to hang out with John Prine and Steve Earle and a 1938 D-18.”
The move and redesign of Carter Vintage “was all purpose-led,” Montague said. “All done by design, and just to be able to drive customers to have the best guitar-buying experience in the world. Whether it was a father and son coming and buying their first guitar, or whether it was a collector buying their 100th, we really just want to make the customer experience like no other.”
