Meridian Winds — Local services in Alaiedon Township

I visited Meridian Winds on 8/11/2021 to purchase a variety of smaller sax supplies/accessories. In the shortest of terms, I was completely blown away by both the selection and the service. More than worth the non-trivial drive from where I live, and well-worth driving the extra hour vs. my usual music store.

Meridian Winds maintains a full stock of a wide variety of goods. One of the things I was looking for was ergonomic neck screws for my Cannonball tenor sax. The question was not if they had them, but which finish and inlay I wanted. Bear in mind, they don't even carry Cannonball saxophones (plenty of Selmers and Yamahas, though!), so they wouldn't otherwise have any reason to carry ergonomic screws for them. Harnesses? All sizes of most major models. Mouthpieces? Multiple of each facing of even some rather niche pieces... I was given a wide variety to try. In fact, I tried more tenor sax mouthpieces than my usual store has on hand at any given time. Ligatures? drawers full of some really snazzy ones, plus some "mere mortal" models on a display.

As for the service, Sam (with whom I worked with the most) and the entire staff were highly attentive and patient in offering their expertise and recommendations on the products they carried (and they carry a lot!). As a first-time customer, I received the sort of service which one would ordinarily only expect after being a loyal and valuable customer of many years. As I said, Sam was patient in listening to my background and product preferences and his recommendations were absolutely on-target.

All in all, I probably saved weeks of product shipping/return times, hundreds of dollars in shipping/returns, and probably several headaches worth of frustration for my trip time to and from the store. I will definitely be coming back.

A great big "thank you" to Sam and all the folks at...

I had my Muramatsu flute in the shop for a COA a couple of months ago, and my experience was alright. Mel was my tech and was so nice when we spoke over the phone. It was polished well, and played better than it did prior to the service. After about two months, it got more difficult to do nuance-y things and I started to have to work harder. I thought it was me, so I just moved on.

I let a repair friend work on it for the Muramatsu certification training a couple weeks ago and come to find out a number of my pads were not shimmed to muramatsu’s standards. I don’t know if it was Mel or my previous tech at JL Smith who did it, but it was a little disappointing to have had my flute in for a COA (and paid a pretty chunk of money) and for there to be things not adjusted properly to muramatsu standards (which is why they have the certification in the first place).

I also wasn’t updated on delays while Mel was sick and was told days after it was expected to be done that she had been out all week sick, and the general customer service (aside from Mel) I received wasn’t great. The person who checked it in made it seem like I couldn’t even drop it off there, I had to ask to leave it and mentioned multiple times that we already spoke to Mel about it.

Overall if I had a different brand I probably would still have Mel work on my flute but between the pad shimming being incorrectly done/not being caught, and the customer service I received aside from Mel, I don’t plan on bringing my muramatsu back to...

So, I recently placed an order for a new mouthpiece for my sax. Initially everything was going to plan and then I noticed that the order still showed as “processing” after a while. Inquiring further I reached out to Meridian Winds and spoke with Zachary, who explained the situation. Due to not having the size mouthpiece I was looking for, a direct order had to be placed with JJ Babbitt. During this lengthy process, Zachary stayed in contact to provide me with updates on an expected arrival date. Although this was out of the hands of Meridian Winds, he refunded my entire shipping fee and also provided me with some Meridian Winds freebies. Needless to say, Meridian Winds customer service is astoundingly excellent; and they have just acquired another loyal customer. Keep up the great work Zachary and...