Jerry has a remarkable inventory, and it's worth a visit for a lefty just to get an opportunity to play a boatload of high-end acoustic & electric guitars. The shop is in a beautiful spot a good ways outside of the actual town of Sarasota, out in horse country (your GPS will get you there, although you'll be surprised how far out of town it is). Prices are reasonable (though some of the high-end stuff certainly isn't cheap). And he is quite welcoming about letting people come in and spend several hours just trying out guitars--which, as us lefties know, is a rare treat.
On the electric side he usually seems to stock quite a few by Gretsch, PRS, Anderson, Collings, Suhr, and others. On the acoustic side there are usually a bunch of Santa Cruz, Collings, and some Martins & Taylors, among others. As a lefty, it really is nice to walk in and have 100 different high-end guitars to try out and compare to one another. Only a couple of places in the entire country where a lefty can do that.
The negatives: Many of the instruments seem to have been hanging on the wall for a long time and need set-up jobs and new strings. It's a one-man shop and I think he's pretty busy just dealing with shipping & receiving, as he does a pretty big national and international business. It seems as though he could use an extra hand to do the setups and re-strings, at least a day or two a week. And, frankly, he could use an extra person who has a little bit more knowledge about the instruments themselves--the wood, the electronics, etc. He's a nice guy, but he's not really an expert. So before going in, I would recommend checking out his website thoroughly (it's fairly up to date) and finding out as much as you can about the guitars on your own.
He has a few amps in the store to play through, but they are not in great shape, and a couple of them are way over-powered for testing out a guitar in the store. You don't need a half-stack to test out a guitar in a shop--you just need a little fender tube amp, which he does NOT have. So it's a bit difficult to get a true feel for how the electrics sound.
Final assessment: If you're a lefty and you're in Florida, it's well worth a trip. read more
