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Sam Ash is closing all of its stores...reportedly due to online competition.

It’s because they never jumped on the free sammich trend. Customer service is everything.

I believe I noticed a tendency was to set up stores within a block of Guitar Centers. I never thought of them as much of a horn store, particularly after the seventies.

I have a half full bottle of Sam Ash branded valve oil.

$250, no low ballers, rare collectors item. I know what I got.

In some regions they must have been like Music & Arts is around here.

Never heard of 'em

A friend of mine worked there repairing woodwinds and a little bit of brass in the back of one of them in a major city. He hooked me up with some surplus high-end instruments that were traded in by a prison that received them as a donation from the military. The prison wanted to exchange them for combo instruments. Another time, he helped me grab a Hirsbrunner 21 which was missing it's pistons - also a military instrument. I suspect that the military really wanted to surplus it so they could replace it, but they could only surplus it if it was non-functional so (???) they threw the pistons in the trash. Anyway that's what I believe. I studied the valve casings and realized that this was a later instrument, the pistons looked could be very much like those which fit so-called "big valve" B&S, except they were nickel plated and had some gimmicky valve guides which were located on different sides of the valve casings, I had some left over B&S pistons from a MAW valve swap-out, relocated the valve guides, lapped them in, got the thing going nicely, and sold it. Later, the parent asked me to sell it again, so I made some more money off the same instrument.