Just a heads up for all you folks out there shopping the 24-7 mall of the internet. As you may know, these days many companies choose to run their businesses with multiple store fronts under different names. This gives the appearance of competition between these sites but the same company gets all the money. The biggest 2 online players to the best of my knowledge are:

Bain Capital, which owns the following: Guitar Center, Muscian's Friend, Music123, Woodwind & Brasswind, and Music & Arts (they also own Harmony Central btw)

I'm not sure which is the parent but American Music Supply, ZZounds, and Same Day Music are the same company as well.

I'll try to keep this info updated and if any of you have some info on other internet super-retailers I'd love to hear about it.

Yeah, I wasn't pleased when Bain went on their roll-up spree. Though I'll happily take a GC bargain, the fact is that they've killed thousands of small local shops, who couldn't obtain gear at wholesale for what GC was selling it at.

But, like dealing with Walmart, don't fall prey to the "everything is cheaper here" hype. More than a few times, I've seen a "Lowest Price!" sign that was utter crap... but people take it literally & buy anyway.

And small shops have something the mega-marts never will: real people. I'd rather pay a few bucks more to even a Music-Go-Round shop, as they're all locally-owned, & often an expansion of an established mom-&-pop music store. Even MARS (damn I miss them) was heavily staffed with minimum-wage wankers who really wanted to work at The Gap.

Just because (say) Bain owns all the outlets, NEVER assume the prices are the same!! The cases I bought from Musicians Friend were $10-$20 more at Music 1-2-3. Shop around a little, use resources like NexTag.

I'm interested in buying a Mandobird IV, a four-string Epiphone electric mandolin. Everybody & his dog is selling these for $199, in your choice of vintage sunburst finish. No, seriously; the axe was released in SIX finishes, & that's all anyone has.

...but with a few minutes of skilled digging, I found ONE dealer that has it in satin black, & it's NOT a corporate site.

Sweetwater does the 3 payments plan as well. I've had decent service and pricing from them.

Found out something interesting today. Sam Ash has some type of partnership with Samsontech (Samson, Hartke, Zoom). The rumor which I've been unable to confirm is that Sam Ash owns Samsontech. Not entirely sure about that but the administrative contact registered with the samsontech.com domain is a Sam Ash email address...