We’re just wrapping up twelve days of holiday sales here at Shar Music®, which involved much writing-of-emails-about-the-sales and much taking-of-photographs of the sales items. Now that the 12 Days of Deals (as they are known) are over, and we have done the good work of alerting you to discounts and such, we had a thought: hey, what gifts do we want for the holidays, anyway?
Never one to shirk a challenge, we hit the hallways, lutherie, warehouse, sales room, production office, and other sections of our Ann Arbor store – to find out what members of the Shar team would want as a gift if they could pick anything in stock.
Of course, our staff gift picks also double as gift recommendations for you and yours. And so, here are the Shar team members’ (highly trained musicians, one and all) individual choices for Shar Music gifts. These picks are all unbiased, unprompted, and unfiltered, and are then subjected to analysis by the Shar Music Blog® itself.
(And here is a cheat sheet - in case you are already pre-holiday-tired and don't feel like reading the entire blog. Though the cheat sheet will not give any explanation for the picks! And you'll miss all the videos of the staff being ambushed by our videographer and being asked to defend their picks.
So below – SPOILER ALERT – is your staff gift pick's cheat sheet...
5) A Ukulele!
And oh! Hey. Do you see that image at the top of the blog? Those are our very own handmade Shar Music® Gift Cards, useful as gifts – and, in a nifty bit of recursion, they can be given as gifts to buy the very gifts shown in the gift blog. But really, these are the very first gift cards that we have ever offered in our sixty-year history. They're made from upcycled scraps of solid maple violin wood, are hand-engraved, and as you can see, they're lovely. Just thought that we would mention them.)
Anyway, and now the full staff gift picks, with detailed explanations…
1) Quincy, a Fine Instrument Professional, would like…the Boveda® Humification System
Staff reasoning: It’s the only humidifier that can both add and remove moisture. You just grab it and throw it in your instrument case, which is so easy!
Shar Music Blog® analysis of the staff choice: Valid! The humidifier has a patented humidity control system, which is very fancy. Why would you want a humidifier than can only remove moisture – what if your violin, or viola, etc., becomes a dried-out, withered husk, and then is blown away into a sort of CGI-looking dust? That would be bad. More validity – Quincy seems legitimately excited here about the Boveda; the Boveda costs under twenty-five bucks, putting it in stocking-stuffer price range, and lo, since the dimensions of the product are five inches by three-and-half inches, it is indeed small enough to cram into a stocking.
Shar Music Blog® rating of Quincy’s choice: Twelve music notes! ♪♫♫♫♫♪♪♪♪♫♪♪
Moving on to our second choice…
2) Louis, our Repair Coordinator, would like… a Shar Music® Maintenance Kit
Staff reasoning: Louis, who is an excellent musician and fiddler (not that fiddling is different from other music, we just wanted to highlight that he can also play the fiddle), works on our sales floor, but also spends a lot of time in our lutherie (French for “stringed instrument workshop”), repairing and maintaining instruments that range from student models to professional “F1” models that cost in the tens of thousands of dollars. Having done a lot of work in the lutherie, he now understands the value (more than ever) of proper instrument maintenance. Thus, he goes with our own maintenance kit as his choice.
Shar Music Blog® analysis of the staff choice: Valid! Louis knows what he is talking about! The Maintenance Kit features a lot of stuff – two kinds of cleaning cloths, peg compound (to fight sticky pegs), cleaner and polisher (makes sense), and a chinrest adjuster, which you really need since a normal screwdriver or anything like it will not work on your chinrest. All very valid, and if you gift this to someone, their instrument will stay in tip-top shape, and Louis can spend less time in the lutherie, and more time interacting with customers in our sales store (although he likes doing both). This is also somewhat stocking-stuffer-y, in that it costs exactly twenty-five dollars.
Shar Music Blog® rating of Louis’s choice: Thirty-five music notes! ♪♫♫♫♫♪♪♪♪♫♪♪♪♫♫♫♪♪♪♪♫♪♪♪♫♫♫♫♪♪♪♪♫♪♪
Now our third staff pick…
3) Jack, our Production Manager(a job that is related to marketing but not exactly marketing, but sort of is), would like… a Birdseye Maple Bass – ¾ Size
Staff reasoning: A warm tone; the Birdseye maple is beautiful; a great sound and look; the Flexocore strings are incredibly suited to the instrument itself.
Shar Music Blog® analysis of the staff choice: Pretty valid! Actually totally valid, but we are docking some points for various irrelevant reasons. Jack is in the majority of our Shar Music videos already, and so seems entirely too comfortable on camera (annoying)! This bass is of Chinese origin, and was hand-picked by our staff during a recent visit to Beijing. Very nice. However, the Shar Music Blog did not get to go on this trip to Beijing (problematic). Other reasons… this is a bass and very large and thus not really a stocking-stuffer. Not that we requested that anyone pick stocking-stuffers, but still. It is also priced at over ten thousand dollars, making it – again – not a stocking-stuffer. However, we have seen this instrument in person and heard Jack play it. It is, as Jack says, very beautiful. And someone should really give this Birdseye Bass a home for the holidays. Therefore, we are revising our opinion upwards and calling this pick ABSOLUTELY VALID.
Shar Music Blog® rating of Jack’s choice: Two music notes! ♪♫
And now, for our next choice…
4) Michael Bean, one of our head Fine Instrument Professionals (sort of his actual title) picks… Wiedoeft Bass Rosin.
Staff reasoning: Michael Bean (who always goes by his full name) just switched to this rosin. It’s got just the right amount of grip and a big tone. He loves it.
Shar Music Blog® analysis of the staff choice: It is possible that Michael Bean knows more about music that anyone the Shar Music Blog® has ever met. When Michael Bean says “Jump!” we say, “How high?” even if him saying “jump” is absolutely unrelated to whatever we were talking about before he said “Jump!” Basically, this blog is in awe of him, and is willing to go along with M.B.’s rosin choice – which, despite the name “Wiedoeft,” is made in the USA, not Germany. It is also a long-beloved rosin that is now being sold again for the first time in almost sixty years. So welcome back, Wiedoeft!
Shar Music Blog® rating of Michael Bean’s choice: A very precise ten musical notes. ♫♫♪♪♪♪♫♪♪♪
Number five…
5) Rianna, a Sales and Service Professional, would like...a ukulele! Did you know that Shar sells ukuleles? We sell ukuleles! (They’re available in blue, red, and purple, as well as plain-Jane natural wood. We sell lots of instruments, including fiddles and guitars, and there are electric violins in our showroom right now that look really… cool.. And we have a greeting card of a cat visiting a dog-run Suzuki Camp (???), which the Shar Music Blog® just found. Basically we sell a lot of things.)
Staff reasoning: Anyway! Where were we? So why does Rianna want a ukulele? She doesn’t know! She’s never played one before! Honestly, never having a had a thing before is a really good reason to want a thing.
Shar Music Blog® analysis of the staff choice: The Blog is way onboard with this choice. In a world of Shar Music experts making expert choices, Rianna boldly just “goes for it,” and picks a ukulele just because. Maybe she just likes the word “ukulele.” In the spirit of Rihanna’s random choice, the Shar Blog was just looking up the word “ukulele,” and randomly ended up on a page listing all the words in English that have two “U”s in a row. “Ukulele” is not one of them. There are only twelve words in English with two “U”s like that – “uu.” One of them is “vacuum.” Try and think of any other one before you click on this link.
Shar Music Blog® rating of Rianna’s choice: Either no music notes or all the music notes, so we’ll compromise with one music note. ♪
And finally…
6) Michael H., our Production Specialist (that’s “Prod-Ops” to you), would like the K&M Adjustable Performance Stool.
Staff reasoning: It’s adjustable; you can angle the seat however you like. It’s great for gig practice. It’s pneumatic: which comes from the ancient Greek "pneuma," meaning “wind” or “air,” and basically means that something uses compressed air to function. Pneumatic! Did you know that there are only 102 words in the English language with a “pn” like that? Anyway.
Shar Music Blog® analysis of the staff choice: Basically, everyone at Shar Music wanted this stool to be their pick. It’s new, it’s cool, it’s black, it’s German, and it’s incredibly comfortable (we use it all the time during meetings). Four different people wanted this as their gift choice, and somehow, Michael wound up with it. Unfair.
Shar Music Blog® rating of Michael H’s choice: Obviously, Michael gets no music notes, because everyone wanted this pneumatic stool. However, you, the Shar Music Blog® reader, get five stars for reading all the way through this blog. Thank you! ♪♫♪♪♪
