Lark In the Morning

These people sell junk. Bought a bagpipe from them that was unplayable and they wouldn’t give me my money back. Avoid these crooks at all cost.

Really great place to come and peruse a great selection of instruments from the quirky to the tribal to the beautiful… I like the staff… and the freedom to play and admire their inventory — which is decent, as are their prices. A good place to find a really random instrument.

Holy shit! This place is amazing! I love the samba whistles, sitars, and weird violins with trumpet horns attached. Very cool.

A psychotic music store with some instruments so bizarre that even the employees didn’t know what the hell they were called. I have only been to the store once, but what an experience! I played, or at least tried to play, instruments that honked, hooted, plonged, and screamed in every scale and mode ever conceived. Honestly, some of the instruments were crap and not really playable, and some of the stuff placed out front for tourists overpriced, but if you looked you could find absolute gems. Gorgeous ouds, saz and curas from the middle east. Vielles and gambas from Europe. Dumbeks from Africa, Sitars from India and other things from god know where. A surreal experience for any musician and if you can ignore some of the junk a place to possibly find a once in a life instrument

This place is crazy! It has every string instrument you can think of from every corner of the world. I want to play everything when I’m there. However if most of the instruments are not the highest quality. Still it’s a fun place to visit if you love strings.

This store is great. Really friendly service and an amazing selection of instruments. A wonderful addition to Valencia.

Lark in the Morning in San Francisco is very nice. It doesn’t have quite the homey feel as the Mendocino store does, but that’s okay. The staff still manages to be helpful and their instruments are still in great condition. There is a surprisingly small amount of dust given the nature of the store.

I avoid Fisherman’s wharf area like the plague, a plague that will instantly make you ask the question, «is this the same city I live and love?» It’s completely on the other side of town from me, there’s no parking, there’s bad restaurants… ick.
But tucked away among the tourist store ghetto of the Cannery building, is one of the most diverse and fascinating collections of ethnic instruments you can find in one store. And while they do have some crappy knick-​knacks for the tourists in there, they have a lot of very high quality, authentic viola de gambas, cajons, ocarinas, zithers, bagpipes, gongs, bells, and sirens.
I knew of Lark in the Morning loooong before I even lived here! Why? Well first, in case you don’t know I’m a professional drummer and percussionist. Besides this rad store, they also maintain a very good mail order and web business, so I used to await the Lark in the Morning newspaper so I could drool over obscure percussion toys as a college student in Texas. Now 11 year later, I can indulge any time I want, and scarily, can afford anything I want!
If you go in the evening or weekend, the noise of random customers in there banging a gong can be a bit overwhelming. So I recommend checking it out during the weekday when no one is in the shop. Service can be hit or miss, mostly miss because they don’t really go out of their way to help you, otherwise they’d get 5 stars. Also, last time I went, I was pleasantly surprised to find free 2 hour parkng only 2 blocks away. who knew.

WOOOOWWWWW… I love acoustic music and when I read about this musical instrument store on
…
I had to visit the store. !!! IT is difficult to find inside the «Del Monte Shopping Center», and parking is horrible… because Fisherman’s Wharf is filled with junky retail stores selling cheap chotchkasMADE-​IN-​CHINA, like miniature SF cable cars, and sweatshirts for tourists needing something to keep them warm during their shopping sprees or large, cheap suitcases for tourists to take their chotchkas back home.
But I have always wondered why it was so difficult to find a place that sold musical instruments and now there is a place in San Francisco that fills a need that many people in the Bay Area have had. (After all, not all of us can afford that $ 11 million Guarneri cello, let alone, have the musical technique to be on the worldwide concert circuit.)
Did you know that some of the most expensive orchestral instruments can be cellos?
There is also a «Lark In the Morning» musical instrument store in Seattle, WA.

Great place to get musical instruments for kids. They have a whole section with drums (including Remo drums, tongue drums), xylophones, flutes, ocarinas, frogs (parents who go to Music Together will know what I mean), shakers of many sorts and countries, spoons (like they have in Quebec),…
It’s a fun place to take your toddler and get them something useful. My son was in heaven.

I’m convinced if God ever spoke to us, it would be through song. True music is a deeply-​drawn, emotive experience. It is a universal language, though quite unlike the left-​brained logistical lingo of mathematics. It comes from the heart, and takes you to fantastic places.
Lark in the Morning, conveniently located within Del Monte Square (update: moved to the Mission, obviously), sells exotic instruments from around the world. They are instruments with names I cannot even pronounce. You know… there’s that bowl thing that makes a cool droning noise when you brush it with a rod, or a lute from some faraway dumpling place. Of the more familiar, Lark sells instruments like ukuleles, mandolins, winds, and their own line of affordable guitars. I swear I even saw a vintage Moog synth hiding in the corner. There are plenty of cheap toys for kids, guaranteeing a product for any audience. After all, music is an everyman’s venture and not just savored by an elite few.
I’m convinced if God ever spoke to us, it would be through song. If that song happens to be «Baby Got Back,» we’ll know we’re screwed…

When I win the lottery, or find a pot of gold underneath that rainbow (along with a bowl of McCann’s Irish Oatmeal, because that stuff is damned good), I know where I will go for a shopping splurge.
Because here I will be able to buy the bowed psaltery, cello, harmonium, melodica, flute, theremin, African kora, gravichord, Shruti box, autoharp, guitar, xylophone, marimbas, glockenspiel and little musical bells that I’ve so wanted to acquire for ages.
And then, with my army of chaos-​inclined minions, I will make the most glorious, dissonant noise on the planet and every person in the world will bleed from their raptured eardrums, as the music will swell across the horizon.
And there’ll be much rejoicing. On my part. Because I’ll remember to wear earplugs.

If an instrument exists in some little corner of the world LITM has it. Their inventory is incredible! You can check out their storefront in SF or shop online
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