The Mainwood Story

Mainwood Guitars is founded by slide guitarist Peter Struijk in 2020. As a young child Peter was already very interested in music and his passion for traditional blues started soon afterwards. As an adult he has worked as a fulltime musician for many years. Now settled and a family man, he and his beloved wife Susan run their atmospheric boutique store next to their home in Aalst, The Netherlands (a small and friendly village between the rivers).

Mainwood Guitars is not your typical commercial guitar store. It is a personal labour of love, run with the intention to provide a relaxed, homely and comfortable feel. No matter if you're in need of a new guitar, slide or just want to hang! If you expect pure commerce, hard selling and quantity over quality, you might get disappointed. The focus is on care, maintenance and sale of vintage, used and new guitars and other stringed instruments. As Peter always says “We only have the guitars that I personally like”. That results in a shop with a strong focus on resonator guitars, parlors and ukuleles that gives you the feel of a candy store!

Other typical phrases in the shop are “only buy a guitar that really makes you happy” and “it's a passion thing” (maybe we need to make t-shirts out of that..).

In addition to the instruments, Mainwood Guitars has a wide range of exclusive accessories including handmade slides and tone bars, picks, strings, capo’s, microphones and cool merchandise.

Next to the guitar room there's Peter’s workbench. When customers are gone and packages are sent to all countries in need, Peter is fully in his element when working on historical pieces. Besides common repairs, full restorations with respect for the builders are part of a regular workday.
       Susan is the guardian angel when it comes to the important things like bookkeeping, newsletter editing and taking care of the place. When customers had a long drive, she even makes dinner.. You can imagine that she and the kids are Nr1!
       When contributing to conventions you can meet Manfred. With the same passion for old timey blues and guitars, he helps wherever and whenever he can and writes great columns for the monthly newsletter which becomes more and more like a “mini magazine” for all the enthusiasts from all over the place.

Mainwood guitars is an authorized dealer for National Resophonic Guitars, Leewald, Diamond Bottlenecks, Silica Sound, Rocky Mountain, Star Singer Slides, Ear Trumpet Labs, Newtone Strings, Martin Strings, Fred Kelly, Shubb, ProPic, Black Mountain, The Rock Slide, Aquila etc.

*Open Tuesday till Saturday from 10:00 to 21:00.
It's recommended to let us know about your plans to visit. Just to be sure that we can give you all the time and help you need. It also happens that we are out for a walk to the river..