Sam Ash closing after 100 years

[techristian]

Sam Ash is closing after 100 years, so you have a month before they close to get some steals!

Dan

I read 1 month in some places but NYT says "End of July"

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/03/business/sam-ash-music-closing-stores.html

[Greg Mein]

The Sam Ash store in Las Vegas has been a saving grace for us a couple of times. It was incredibly well stocked with a great layout and fantastic staff. We are really going to miss it!

[ProfD]

There's a similar thread at Keyboard Corner.

 

Unfortunately, Brick and mortar music stores will continue to fade as online competitors and YouTube has diminished need for the in-store buying experience.😎

[Notes_Norton]

Bought a few things from a Florida store, including my wife's first Parker guitar. 

Now everything seems to be on the 'net, instead in-store. 

Most of all, though, I miss the old mom & pop music stores.

 

 

 

Notes♫

[Anderton]

On 5/6/2024 at 12:16 PM, ProfD said:

Unfortunately, Brick and mortar music stores will continue to fade as online competitors and YouTube has diminished need for the in-store buying experience.

 

Possibly another factor is better quality control. When I was buying guitars back in the 60s, I'd go into Manny's and try out several guitars before I found the one that was "right." There really were differences. With CNC etc., hands-on evaluation may be seen as less of an issue. 

[ElmerJFudd]

A real shame.  Best music shops in my region by a long shot.  
 

Buy to try and eat the shipping back costs is crap.  Musical instruments aren’t glasses or a dress shirt.  

[Anderton]

The experience of going to a store and shopping is different from scrolling on a computer screen. It was more fun going to Blockbuster than scrolling through Amazon Prime video (one of the worst UIs for streaming services). 

 

One way you used to be able to check out gear was at "hotel shows." But since these were often sponsored by music stores, that option has gone away as well.

[Notes_Norton]

On 5/7/2024 at 5:38 PM, Anderton said:

 

Possibly another factor is better quality control. When I was buying guitars back in the 60s, I'd go into Manny's and try out several guitars before I found the one that was "right." There really were differences. With CNC etc., hands-on evaluation may be seen as less of an issue. 

 

When I bought my first professional saxophone, a Selmer Mark VI (which is now like a pre-CBS Fender, worth a lot of money). I went to Ace Music in Miami. They were our equivalent to Manny's.

 

Saxophones are not in tune with themselves. An adjustment of lip pressure on the reed for each note is required to play in tune. The player practices long tones in front of a tuner, and learns the 'signature' of each horn he/she buys. Which notes are sharp, which are flat, how much, how little, and so on. Muscle memory and ears take it from there.

 

Ace had 3 brand-new ones in stock. Our school Band Director loaned me the school's strobe tuner. I picked the one with the best intonation of the three. It served me well for many years.

Now, if I want to buy a pro sax, I have to get it online. I don't get to pick the best one they have in stock. 

I miss brick-and-mortar music stores, especially the mom&pop type. But there isn't much I can do about it. I supported the last one around, buying everything from strings and reeds to instruments, but too many others went online and he went belly-up.

 

Notes ♫

 

[Stokely]

With modern digital keyboards, the "best one" is one that has been sitting in the box without a bunch of apes banging on it.

But no doubt, it was good to be able to actually see and feel something to see if you got on with it....or didn't.   The most recent trip I took to Sam Ash I remember playing the Roland Fantom 8 they had, and my takeaway was "this thing is HUUUUGE".   Sure I can read dimensions and weight online, but seeing that behemoth, and picking it up an inch off its stand (carefully!)  made me realize there was no way in the world I was going to try to gig it.   I remember ruling out the Roland RD-64 within a minute of playing it due to the key action.

[ProfD]

2 hours ago, Stokely said:

With modern digital keyboards, the "best one" is one that has been sitting in the box without a bunch of apes banging on it.

Correct.  Totally different from instruments that are almost handmade or that could have some type of variance as a result of build materials.

 

 A brick & mortar store with a huge selection of KBs on the floor is still an experience for musicians.  Not so much for the data entry operators i.e. those who use merely use keys to trigger noise or get note data into a sequencer or DAW.🤣😎

[harmonizer]

On 5/10/2024 at 10:16 AM, Notes_Norton said:

 

When I bought my first professional saxophone, a Selmer Mark VI (which is now like a pre-CBS Fender, worth a lot of money). I went to Ace Music in Miami. They were our equivalent to Manny's.......

Ace had 3 brand-new ones in stock. Our school Band Director loaned me the school's strobe tuner. I picked the one with the best intonation of the three. It served me well for many years.....

 

I had a very similar experience, going to some store in NJ (a store recommended by my band director; don't recall which it was). The store had 3 Mark VI altos in stock, and all 3 felt very different from the student sax (Bundy) I had played until then. I was 14 and I really didn't know what I was doing, but I chose the one that "spoke" the best. I can't imagine a sax player picking their first pro-grade horn without comparing multiple horns via in-person play testing.

[Anderton]

I wonder if some of this about music becoming more of a hobby than a profession. I assume software is the main "axe" for hobbyists, and they have free trials. 

[Notes_Norton]

20 hours ago, harmonizer said:

I can't imagine a sax player picking their first pro-grade horn without comparing multiple horns via in-person play testing.

I totally agree.

 

I was playing an old Selmer Modele 26 at the time, which sounded good, but the intonation, like most older saxes was challenging. 

Especially for a student, having better intonation is a good thing, after all, the young person's ears aren't fine-tuned yet. 

The last 2 saxes I bought on the Internet. I'm happy with both, but I wonder if I could have been happier if I could have tried them out and compared them with others. But I'm not going to lose any sleep over that.

I do miss local mom & pop music stores. 

[harmonizer]

I consider the intonation of my (very late serial 238k) Mark VI alto to be imperfect. I often close the low B-natural key with my left pinky when playing E2, and sometimes with D2. But I love the way it speaks.

[Stokely]

On 5/12/2024 at 11:18 PM, Anderton said:

I wonder if some of this about music becoming more of a hobby than a profession. I assume software is the main "axe" for hobbyists, and they have free trials. 

Free trials (mostly), and in general it's much cheaper than any pro instrument.  The most expensive software plugin I've considered is Omnisphere, and it's $479 currently and doesn't go on big sales.  The most expensive one I own, not counting Logic, is Komplete but I bought different upgrades over the course of a couple years, all on sale.  Single plugin I own, probably Repro, I paid less than $100 for it on sale.  I could easily do all my synth-centric music with it (or with Alchemy in Logic for that matter).

Speaking of hobbyists vs working pros, If I was back in my jingle studio days (only worked for a few years), software would have made my life 1000 times easier.   Trying to save and then recall a past session back then was a nightmare and quite time-consuming.  I had no automation on my console.   I would be completely in the box if I was a working pro again.  Granted, I was not some top level engineer working with artists making albums where that extra juice (if it exists) from hardware might matter.   So with all that said, I kind of wonder if hobbyists aren't the thing keeping the hardware relevant   I really have no idea, doesn't matter in the end I guess.  Probably a mix of people using both hardware and software.

[KuruPrionz]

When I moved to Bellingham in 2005, there were several local music stores. 

Now we have a Guitar Center (and nothing else) and who knows for how much longer. 

 

The end of an era. I've always bought used and there are plenty of sellers on craigslist locally. Try before you buy has not gone away, it has shifted to another area of the population. 

[Greg Mein]

We dropped into the Las Vegas Sam Ash this afternoon to check on the deals. 10-20% on accessories but not so good on more expensive items (amps, guitars, keyboards). It appeared they'd reduced inventory quite a bit but I imagine they're shifting things around between stores and such. They had a small selection of tube amps but the discount on those was only 5%. There were some nice guitars and a few nice keyboards still left.

 

I should note that I'm not in the market for any high end gear; I have a fine collection of top notch guitars, all the keyboards we need and my drummer recently gave me a Marshall DSL15C that will probably become my main gigging amp for the foreseeable future so the deals would have to be rather spectacular to entice me.

 

The staff were friendly and helpful as always but as you might expect the overall mood was a little somber. My wife and I are really disappointed to see this store close down. We bought a mic stand, a couple of XLR cables and some guitar strings. I'm not sure how long the close out will go on but we'll be leaving to spend June and July in the midwest and are unlikely to get back there.

[Joe Muscara]

In Houston, we're lucky. There are a few scattered small guitar and other instrument shops around town (Rockin' Robin, Texas Music Emporium, Andrew's Music and others I can't remember), and Fleming, the most recommended repair shop for woodwinds, brass, and percussion is expanding, taking over the small house next door to be the sales showroom while the repair shop remains in the commercial metal building next to it. It warms my heart to see a small business succeed like this, even more so because it's music instrument related.

 

[Note that I have zero affiliation with any of the stores mentioned. I'm just happy to see them exist and succeed, and wanted to provide info for anyone who might be coming to or in town about them.]

 

We have one Sam Ash location. It was two different music stores before that, Hermes Music and Parker Music. It's in an ugly-ass location in a freestanding building by one of the freeways. It will be interesting to see what it becomes next.