Gruhn Guitars

George Gruhn was a graduate student in animal behaviour at the University of Tennessee when old guitars took the doctorate away from him. On 2 January 1970 he opened a shop with twenty two instruments in a room twenty feet by sixty, at 111 Fourth Avenue North, across the alley from the stage door of the Ryman Auditorium. It was called GTR then, after Gruhn, his partner Tut Taylor and the repairman Randy Wood. The trade it helped invent barely existed at the time. That a prewar Martin or a sunburst Les Paul might be worth more than a new instrument was an argument Gruhn spent decades making, and the guides he wrote with Walter Carter are still used to date and identify American fretted instruments.

For forty three years the shop never moved more than about a hundred feet from the corner of Fourth and Broadway, taking 410 Broadway in 1976 and the corner building itself in 1993. In 2013 it left downtown altogether for 2120 Eighth Avenue South. Gruhn told the Nashville Scene that year that Broadway had turned into half of what Marty Stuart called a hillbilly Bourbon Street and half Daytona Beach at spring break, except every day. The front of the house is a wall of vintage instruments under glass and on hooks, with the repair shop on the top floor.