We hope that you have been able to stay healthy and sane over the past two months of shut-down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
St Louis has begun lifting restrictions and reopening the city as of May 18. We are excited to announce that this allows us to reopen our doors for business. Our top priority in this initial reopening phase is to provide a safe environment for you and for our employees who will be returning to work. As such, we will be re-opening with a reduced in-store staff and will continue our practice of both on-site and off-site repairs. We will be practicing social distancing and following all the recommendations issued by the CDC in this “new normal.”
Our hours during the week will be the same as always: Monday – Friday 10am – 6pm but Saturdays will be by appointment only, for now (phone hours on Saturday are 10am-2pm). For accessory needs, we recommend placing your order on our web site. We’re offering free shipping for any orders over $100 and generally can ship the same day for orders placed before noon.
If you stop by the shop for reeds/accessories or if you need to drop off/pick up a repair, anytime during store hours is fine. However, if you would like to play test an instrument or mouthpiece, we will be doing that by appointment only for the foreseeable future. To reduce the number of people in the building, we are limiting our instrument/mouthpiece trials to one customer at a time. Please understand, if you show up at the store to play horns, and you don’t have an appointment, we will fit you in if we can but may have to ask you to wait if someone else has an appointment. After each appointment, we will be sanitizing the play test room and any equipment that was tried before the next appointment. We also ask that you bring along only one or two friends or family members or private instructor during an appointment. Lastly, everyone visiting the store is required to wear a mask. If you come in without a mask, you will not be allowed in the building.
So, you make that appointment, you have your mask, and you want to play some stuff, what can you play? The answer is just about any horn in the shop, with just a couple exceptions. Sanitizing horns can easily be done for lacquer and plated instruments; however, it cannot be done on unlacquered instruments (without leaving streaks). So, for now, new unlacquered instruments are not available for play testing. You can also play test any used or vintage mouthpiece (again, we’ll properly clean and sanitize when you are finished), but only those new mouthpieces that we have demos on hand can be play tested. Other new mouthpieces in the box and accessories (including ligatures) will not be available for play testing.
Going along with keeping numbers in our store down, many of our repair techs are going to continue to work from home. Except for simple repairs such as replacing a neck cork or tenon cork, we will not have enough techs on hand to do same-day repairs at this time. You can certainly still drop a horn off for repair and as always, the turnaround time will vary based on the repair needs.
Music is a great escape for everyone, and I have, like I’m sure many of you have, been listening to a lot of music and itching to start making some of my own with friends again. Saxquest will be doing everything we can to help our customers make music in a safe manner.