| I recently had a customer email me to complain that his new GS Special mouthpiece had fingerprints on it when it arrived. I apologized for forgetting to wipe it off, but it also made me realize that GetASax is an intrinsically ‘hands-on’ business. I, Brian, play every saxophone and mouthpiece extensively to make sure that it is exactly as described. Although many sales are online, it’s as different from anonymous e-commerce purchasing as possible. You want advice? You talk to me. You have a problem? You talk to me. Want to know how X mouthpiece works with Y saxophone? You guessed it. It’s all right here, so you can just ask. You get the individual attention that buying a musical instrument deserves. It makes buying easy, personal, and satisfying.
Why do business with us? In a word, quality. It is a place where saxophones are done RIGHT. There are lots of places to buy average saxophones. This is the place to buy a really special one. Selling the best saxophones means we have to be very picky about two things:
Quality Horns This site is meant to be serious about saxophones. The goal is that only the best horns make it on this site. We scour the entire planet for the best playing, rarest, and most beautiful saxophones available, and we pay their owners well for them when we find them. Selecting the good stuff and weeding out the bad, based on experience with thousands of horns and hundreds of thousands of photos, is one of the major services we provide that saves you lots of frustration and disappointment. Finding a truly great saxophone on eBay/a pawn shop/Craigslist etc. can be challenging to say the least. Quality Saxophone Repair Have you ever played a saxophone that really played its best? That played the lower register effortlessly, that felt good under the fingers, that was not stuffy, that vibrated in your hands because it was full of life and ready to make music? It seems like many players have not. This is because good saxophone repair is hard to find. But top-quality repair is just as important as getting a good quality horn. And it is hard to know if your horn has been repaired well, without having a lot of repair experience. GetASax is about being super-picky on your behalf, so that your new horn comes with the best quality saxophone repair available. The best saxophone restoration experts are often highly in-demand, and their time is difficult to reserve. But we think that it is worth it. Not just worth it – it’s necessary to get the best restoration if you want to experience your saxophone as it was meant to be. The saxophone repair world is plagued by gimmicks and only too often, by sub-standard work, regardless of price tag or even of apparent online reputation. Unfortunately, you can only learn this the hard way. I don’t know how many times I have had to get a freshly-overhauled saxophone thoroughly re-repaired, or even completely re-overhauled because of poor quality work, cutting corners, or a setup and/or adjustment materials that made no sense. So in addition to weeding out the sub-standard horns for you, the OTHER major service we provide is weeding out the sub-standard saxophone repair. Vintage saxophone restoration has a steep learning curve, and buying from us saves you the frustration of getting stuck with an poorly setup saxophone that only plays half as well as it could. I don’t know how many saxophones I have seen that would play much better if they had only a few subtle problems fixed. But even many pros just limp along on sub-standard setups. The horns we sell overhauled play like new, or even better! A word on price This focus on quality over making a quick buck makes selling saxophones something of a labor of love. Anyone can patch up an old horn and flip it for a quick profit. It is much more of an investment (of time and money, and effort) to do things right. Despite this focus on quality, we still strive to offer competitive prices. Yes, we tend to be more expensive than the usual rafts of decomposing saxophone-shaped trash washing around on eBay, but that should be no surprise. We are selling something that is fundamentally different in kind: Saxophones done right. And even so, our prices are usually very good considering what you get. Buyers sometimes try to ‘compare prices’ on something like a silver Conn alto. Well, there are lots of different versions of silver Conn out there. When we have a “normal” one in, the price will be similar to prices elsewhere. When we have one that is a special vintage, has special features, or is in mint, like new condition, well, it is worth more. But that’s because it’s not the same as a normal one. I’m sure this makes sense to people who have been around for a while, but to new buyers, it can be confusing. If you have a question about the price of something, contact us. Sometimes, we have some flexibility, and sometimes we don’t. Warranty Freshly restored saxophones typically need very little work of any kind for many years, and we are happy to stand behind the horns we sell. For any overhauled horn bought from us, we will cover at our discretion, any repairs that are necessary for one year after purchase. We also do money-back returns and strive to offer the best photos and the most complete descriptions of saxophones available, so that you can know exactly what you are getting. Trades We are happy to take trades and partial trades for horns that are the kind of thing that we sell. That is not to say that we only trade for museum pieces! Honest wear is not a problem if the horn is great. But we end up having to overhaul almost all horns that come in on trade, so take that into consideration when calculating your horn’s likely trade value. Something I keep coming back to…
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