Ellman’s Music Center

Excellent music store. Great staff-​ask for Pete! If you need a musical instrument this is your go to place.

I LOVE music stores. I love going into an old store with instruments covering the walls and displays stacked with sheet music. –Old and current. With talkative old men who want to show you 40 yr old pics of the time they met music legends. Forgetting that they told you about that the last time you were in. And the 15 times before that.
If you love that too, don’t get overly excited about this review. That experience was in a previous town and Ellman’s isn’t that experience. There are instruments on the wall (Brass, strings and woodwinds) and there is *some* sheet music. It’s not a store steeped with stories though. It’s rather utilitarian. What it is though is friendly and efficient.
Ellman’s Pros:
I’ve yet to get held up in Ellman’s and I have been here 2 dozen times at least. While I used to find «Mr Music’s» stories endearing, I couldn’t get out in less than 10 minutes. It was more like 30! Ellman’s is no frills and no nonsense. Get in and get out.
They have a good selection of instruments. – both new and used.
They are fantastic with repairs. –I have had cellos repaired 3 times and I would not hesitate to bring anything to be serviced here.
They offer a lot of lessons and the scheduling is pretty flexible with good pricing.
Cons:
Although they are willing to order anything, their sheet music is severely lacking. Nearly every time I’ve needed to purchase piano or other books, I’ve had to order at least 1 or 2 of the books I’ve needed. There is not a broad selection. It seems this store is primarily for lessons and repairs, both of which have merit. In a perfect world, they’d have more music though.
I come here because of location, the pricing is certainly good and the service is good. They most definitely do not meet all of my needs, but they offer enough to keep me coming back. What they can’t do for me, can be fulfilled with a few taps on my iPhone through Amazon.
I miss «Mr Music» with his old cluttered store and his sometimes tiresome story telling though. You have to love and appreciate anyone who’s passionate about music and its history.

A lovely store. We went in about a month ago in the middle of a snow storm to get a transposed edition of a vocal solo I needed for a memorial service over that weekend. There were various sounds from lesson studios audible in the background, which brought back such fond memories of the music store where i taught voice and piano many years ago. And they were so helpful; although they admittedly didn’t specialize in vocal music (more instrumental and piano), they had a new transposition program and ran it for me, and I got what I needed in the right key for an extremely reasonable price. Truly great customer service; thank you!

Ellman’s Music was my first job when I was 15. I used to work in the back, cleaning the instrument rentals when they were returned by the kids for the summer. Blech. Eventually, I worked my way up to spending a couple hours of the week at the front counter selling to customers, but was still relegated to cleaning most of the time. At least I had my friend Ashley to show the disgusting stuff I found to!
Ellman’s is a great place to get an instrument fixed. The repair shop is phenomenal — particularly if you have a woodwind instrument. I own a professional model flute, and Paul Kober is the only person who I would ever trust to fix it.
It’s a great place to have your instrument fixed, and I made some lifelong friends working there too!

Very nice people work here. Although I didn’t find any classical piano music, the nice guy directed me to Beautiful Music in Downers Grove (which I see received good marks from Fresh E), which I appreciated. They do carry several racks of music for solo instuments, mostly pop. They sell and rent instruments, and I found out I can either rent my daughter an violin for $ 15/​month or purchase one for $ 1500 – 4000. I’ll go with the rental for now, but if she progresses to Paganini I’ll get the good ax.