Stan M. Jay, owner of the Mandolin Brothers musical instrument store on Staten Island, which has been a pilgrimage destination for recording stars, collectors and other connoisseurs of the guitar, mandolin, banjo and ukulele for more than 40 years, died on Wednesday in Staten Island. He was 71.

The cause was Mantle cell lymphoma, his wife, Bea, said.

Mr. Jay played a virtuoso behind-the-scenes role in the musical lives of performers such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Buffett and Paul Simon — not as a performer, but as one of the country’s premier dealers and restorers of new and vintage fretted instruments.

The walls of his office at Mandolin Brothers, located in a tiny commercial strip, were papered with snapshots of him with those musicians and others, a collage of a Woodstock that might have been: Bruce Springsteen, Judy Collins, Lenny Kravitz, Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow and Crosby, Stills and Nash, as well as celebrity guitar connoisseurs like Conan O’Brien and the filmmaker Christopher Guest.

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