Posted on Feb 28, 2025 at 11:46 am by

By Joshua Anderson for the Peekskill Business Improvement District

Division Street Guitars, aka “Guitar Heaven,” gathers, refurbishes, and repairs guitars and amps from all around the world and resells them at 36 N Division Street in downtown Peekskill—even sometimes sending them back across the globe.

When we conducted our interview, the DSG team was readying for a convention in Texas where they planned to bring home prized pieces to sell in the shop. Conventions are a common thing for the store and they try to attend at least one of these events a month.

“We ship all over the world, we just shipped a bass to Rome,” said store manager Matthew Labozza.

Owner Paul DeCourcey started DSG as a repair shop in 2014. Soon, the opportunity presented itself and the shop began to sell instruments as well as fix them.

“We started off with a small inventory, you know, a few things and it worked.. it just grew really organically,” DeCourcey said.

“I started working on them (guitars and amps) in 1998 or so. I was about 20 years old and working at the Ossining Music Center. After Ossining, I lived down in Brooklyn for a while. I worked at a shop down there (Southside Guitars) for about 10 years,” DeCourcey said.

Beautiful guitars are hung across two neatly organized rows, which cover both sides of the front of the store. The store is like a well-curated museum. The cheapest guitar goes for about $150, an Apatone electric. One of the most expensive guitars recently at the shop had a price tag of $5,000–a 1963 Gibson ES330.

There is a small seating area as well as several stools for customers to sit, play and test out guitars. The back of the shop primarily functions as the repair section where most of the magic happens–from rewiring amplifiers to re-stringing instruments.

“We do anything from routine maintenance, getting setups once or twice a year on your guitars just to get them to play right–all the way to full restorations of vintage acoustics, where you essentially rebuild them,” Labozza said.

He explained that the store has been doing e-commerce for a longtime and when Covid-19 occurred there wasn’t a rush to get involved with the Internet because they already were online. The store is currently doing about 50-50 in person to online sales.

DSG is a safe space for the community and vital hub for local artists. Christina Picciano  explains that the store is where people can feel welcomed and can express their unique styles. Picciano is a musician herself, playing guitar, bass and drums.

“It’s just the people here who really make it, they make you really feel welcomed and special and listened to. Sometimes you don’t always get that in those big box stores,” Picciano said.

Unlike larger music retailers that mainly focus on volume, Division Street Guitars prioritizes its community and highly personalized service for its customers. This is particularly important for beginners who are seeking guidance, encouragement and basic knowledge.

Picciano has had ties to the store and its staff long before she started working with them. They have been longtime friends since high school and frequently reminisce about the local bands they participated in during their youth.

“Matt was in my favorite local band, Norshot,” Picciano said.

“Oh, they were the worst,” Labozza added.

“Paul was in my other favorite local band, Awoke,” Picciano said. She is currently in a local punk band called ‘All My Friends,’ you can find them on spotify.

DeCourcey does more than just repair guitars and create a warm environment, he’s also a rockstar and a family man. When he isn’t at the shop, he is with his family or playing the instruments he takes such great care of.

The shop has earned a good and wide reputation for its consistency and passionate care of guitars—even having been known to make handmade instruments from scratch in the shop; they haven’t been making them the past few years, though. Custom guitars can take up a lot of time and the tradeoff isn’t always worth it from a financial standpoint. However, DeCourcey said he is still willing to do a custom build if someone asks. He believes there is a decline in the general production of the instrument, however, he said there are still plenty of good companies doing it right, from the guitars to the amps. And, of course, the classics just keep getting better with age.

DeCourcey also talked about his philosophy on instrument maintenance, comparing it to caring for a car. Proper care promotes long life in everything: caring for your instruments ensures that they will play better, for longer.

If anything happens to your beloved guitar or amp, take it to DeCourcey at Division Street Guitars and he’ll have you right in no time.

If you are a downtown business, and would like to be considered for an upcoming profile article, please email us at peekskillbid1@gmail.com

 

(C) 2024 Peekskill Business Improvement District. Photos by Joshua Anderson. Edited by Bill Powers. 
If you are a downtown destination business, and would like to be considered for an upcoming profile article, please email us at peekskillbid1@gmail.com.