Despite the convenience of online shopping, sometimes it's good to handle the product in person, be it trying on clothes, test-driving a car, or just making sure that Russian wife is at least somewhat Americanized, because in Russia, wife orders you. Finally letting you strum it before you buy it, Austin Bazaar.
Started out of a former Dell employee's garage only to become one of the world's largest online retailers of musical instruments, Austin Bazaar has taken the plunge into brick-and-mortardom with a massive wood-paneled showroom stocked with entire catalogs (plus store-exclusives) from top brands, all managed by a guitar guru who cut his teeth at Strait Music before switching teams (not that there's anything wrong with that). For shredders they've got a 16ft pegboard wall-o-Fenders with over 100 playable axes including an exhaustive collection of American-made models, a Taylor-centric acoustic room stocked with rarities like 8-string baritones and a limited Macassar Ebony short-scale with a honey-bursted cedar top, and an insane Gretsch selection featuring a hand-painted one-of-a-kind Brian Setzer Hot Rod -- break it and you'll be the one jumping, jiving, and wailing. No-neck merchandise includes the full catalog of Orange Amps, a Zildjian wall, Yamaha electric pianos and keyboard workstations, and a plug-and-play rack of effects pedals, as well as their in-house wind-and-orchestral brand, Barcelona, which isn't nearly as long on wind as the movie.
Since the storefront is adjacent to their warehouse, they'll have weekend fire sales of up to 70% off slightly used online returns, none of which are named Ekaterina.
