By Nicole Lewis

Robin A. Weber, who owns a high-end guitar business in Nashville, received an e-mail message in July 2009 from an Army sergeant serving in Afghanistan. Would Ms. Weber consider donating a guitar to his troop so he could learn to play from one of his comrades?

“There was no hesitation on my part,” says Ms. Weber. “If a soldier deployed on active duty wants a guitar, I’m going to send him one.”

Today, about 130 active-duty servicemen and women have received donated instruments from Guitars 4 Troops, a project founded by Ms. Weber; another 60 soldiers are on the waiting list for an acoustic or electric guitar. Ms. Weber has reached out to other guitar makers and music stores for donations of guitars and accessories, such as strings, pitch pipes, and lesson books, which she sends along with the instruments.

“If they can have a guitar to help them escape or remind them of home, I want to do anything I can I make their life a little more bearable while they are over there,” says Ms. Weber, who has been playing guitar since high school. “Music is a healer, it makes you feel good.”

A former nurse who once considered joining the reserves, Ms. Weber is aware of the sacrifices soldiers have made to serve. “If I had been called up I would have lost my business,” she says.

Ms. Weber estimates that she has spent about $5,000 of her own money on the group—she now donates 10 percent of her business profits to the venture—and says she has received about $10,000 in cash contributions from individuals. One guitar maker who helped the cause donated $1,000 from the sale price of one of his guitars in Ms. Weber’s shop. Another gave a guitar worth $500. Individuals have also mailed her their guitars, but Ms. Weber says money is more helpful; it costs $50 to ship a guitar overseas and she can buy a good guitar wholesale for $150.

“I’m not going to send a cheap guitar to a soldier,” she says.

She runs Guitars 4 Troops out of her home with the help of a part-time employee for her business, Guitar Gallery. Ms. Weber says she will apply for tax-exempt status for Guitars 4 Troops within the year. For now, a group called Artists in Christian Testimony International, in Brentwood, Tenn., accepts tax-deductible gifts to Guitars 4 Troops and channels the money to the organization through an arrangement known as a fiscal sponsorship. Music 4 Jeremy’s Cherubs, a charity in Overland Park, Kan., has offered to help accept donations of instruments.

Testimonials and photographs—including one of a soldier and a snowman jamming together on guitars—on Guitars 4 Troops’ Web site speak to the positive power of music in tough times. To maximize its impact, Guitars 4 Troops requests that when soldiers who receive the charity’s instruments end their deployments, they pass them on to other service members.

“Having some playing time really help[ed] to take my mind off being deployed and being away from my wife and three kids,” wrote Michael J. Vosen, a former safety officer in Sharana, Afghanistan, in October. “It was a wonderful change of pace.”