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Why we believe that your decision should not be based upon price alone

One of the most important advantages that we offer you is full access to a vast wealth of experience. All of our staff are trained musicians or technicians (or both). However, you only gain the benefit of this knowledge if we have the opportunity to understand as much as possible about your musical circumstances. If you simply compare prices on different websites we have no opportunity to establish the dialogue that we believe is so important.

Our pride in what we do means that we offer an absolute guarantee that you will never buy a 'nightmare' instrument from us. A customer recently brought in a saxophone purchased for £90 from a world famous auction site. He wanted us to confirm it's value. Sadly we had to point out the following:

• The components were so crudely made that it had obviously been constructed by someone who was wearing a blindfold and boxing gloves and whose only tool was a stone chisel.
• The manufacturer didn't have sufficient pride in his work to put a name on it. Perhaps he had sufficient wisdom to not want to be associated with it.
• The pads, which were a rather attractive bright red colour, stood .5" proud and were the same consistency of as my mother's treacle sponge.
• It didn't have enough keys - they hadn't fallen off - this was a mysterious design that simply didn't incorporate the standard number of standard keys e.g. only two keys for the left hand little finger!
• Only a rich man would have enough money to pay for the work required to enable it to function at all. It required a complete rebuild as well as the construction of new keys and linkages.
• It was three inches too short so it would never ever play in tune!

The gentleman was a little upset when we suggested that he had bought an ornament rather than an instrument! The owner of this curious piece of engineering confidently assessed his chances of getting his money back as zero.

Sadly this is only the latest of a number of similar instruments we have come across.

CAVEAT EMPTOR!

Critically, the Internet completely fails to discriminate between two widely differing product groups:

Group 1: Products which offer a completely predictable performance that may be readily discerned from a specification list and which are identical whoever supplies them.

Group 2: Products whose performance will be enhanced beyond factory settings before sale and where parallel products offer widely differing chances of successfully matching the aspirations of the player.

The Internet encourages the consumer to make a decision based on price. We believe that price should be only one of a number of significant criteria. We want to talk to you so that we can help you achieve your aim. Some shops are happy to sell you an instrument. We want you to get the right instrument.

We promise that all our instruments are competitively priced. Please remember that if you choose to get in touch, our informed and impartial advice and technical skills will also be included in your discounted price. You have nothing to lose and our expertise to gain.

You could easily spend less money elsewhere and yet still pay a higher price.

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