Year-round
A century of the instrument trade, and most of it you can play.
A museum about how music actually gets made and sold — the instruments, the shops, and the industry behind both. It sits on Armada Drive, minutes from the Flower Fields.
The collection runs chronologically from the marches and rags of the early 1900s through jazz, folk, rock and pop, to the cross-cultural music of the present. Vintage instruments sit alongside recreated music-store displays.
It is a hands-on museum rather than a glass-case one: a number of instruments are there to be played, supported by audio and video that traces how the trade changed around them.
Make a day of it
While you're here.
Everything nearby is run by a Carlsbad Chamber member.