Back in the early1970's (pre-Backstage Music), my favorite music store was Strings And Things in Memphis, TN. It was the coolest store on the planet. And, it was the closest store to me that sold Ernie Ball Slinky strings. It seems like the familiar green package was about $2.99 at the time, and as a young fellow, I had to save up to buy new strings, plus have the gas money (at 33 cents per gallon) to drive to Memphis.
Fast forward to late 2021.
Ernie Ball has done a pretty good job of managing inventory during the recent pandemic, but now that materials shortages are rampant, they are finally bowing to reality and raising prices on some of their products. Those products are mostly the Slinky line of strings, and they are going up, in most cases, a buck a set. The old, familiar green regular Slinkys are going from $5.99/set to $6.99/set, as are most six-string Slinky sets. Slinky bass strings also went up a bit.
Regretfully, that same old harsh reality that forced Ernie's hand is also impacting Backstage Music, and we're having to go up on our prices to match the increase in our cost of Slinkys.
While we're tempted to say "boo, hiss" at this development, we have to give credit to the Ball family for managing to put off the price increase as long as possible, and not doing an across-the-board increase, but rather an impacted-product increase. Kudos to the folks at Ernie's house.