Sandra Lindsay has trouble talking about her late son in front of strangers, but she can still feel him in every corner of the store they built together on the corner of Hunter and National Park streets.
When she turns the light out at the end of the day, she's sure he's still wandering the sale floor, tinkering with the instruments and filling the place with his legacy.
It is the first time Ms Lindsay has steered the Musos Corner 'May the Fourth' sale without her son, whose inspiration 15 years ago turned a music store sale into a key event on the Newcastle musicians' social calendar.
It had been a year of fire, and then a year of floods and storms that saw the Pasha Bulker run aground on Nobbys in 2007. Then, in 2008, Andrew Lindsay came home from London to get married with an idea for a Star Wars-inspired sale event at his family's store.
The rules were simple enough: you could score a bargain if you knew where to look - some rare and unique instruments would be marked down by as much as 90 per cent - but it was first come, first served, and you had to shop in store.
Ms Lindsay has shopkeeping in the blood - she remembers growing up in Scotland, sneaking into the bombed-out buildings of her neighbourhood to play shop. But even she could not have anticipated what her son's sale would become.
Young musicians - some still in school - sleeping rough outside the store for days just to save their spot. They came with guitars to wile away the hours, and struck up a carefully adhered-to culture of the line.
In the smaller store, across the road from the current premises, the crew manning the registers on sale day would allow shoppers inside in groups of 10 to manage the rush, but now the larger shop can handle much more. Still, the tradition of the first 10 through the door on May 4 holds and the shoppers keep a gentleman's agreement not to snake another muso's prize.
As she watches the shoppers looking out for each other, sometimes calling out finds from across the store, Ms Lindsay thinks of her son.
"He had a great way with people," she said, remembering the countless times he would ask her to call up someone's parents to reassure them, because a friend was going through a rough patch, and he wanted to make sure they were ok, "He was very caring."
Andrew was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in August last year. He died in December at 51.
As the doors opened on Thursday, kicking off the first time the 'May the Fourth' sale would run over four days instead of the one-day-only event, Maitland's Banjo Longworth dashed through the door in search of a custom Gibson guitar.
He couldn't have known that a few days before, Sandra Lindsay had taken a phone call from someone in the music industry asking if they could buy the instrument on the spot; it's the only Gibson of its kind in the country and it came to Musos Corner by the luck of a ballot.
It's worth upwards of $10,000.
Ms Lindsay spoke down the phone and said if the caller was in line when the doors opened, and was lucky enough to know where to look inside, they could have the instrument for the marked down price of around $1000 - but, either way, it would only be sold to a shopper on sale day; those are the rules.
The one-of-a-kind guitar went home on Thursday with the beaming teenager who camped outside for four days just to be the first one through the doors on May 4.
