I've noticed that my area Sam's Club has had a $150 Clarinet and a $350 Alto Saxophone on display recently. (About what I paid for good quality name-brand instruments ca 1956.) I haven't looked at them closely enough to tell how well they're made, but from a distance they look comparable the "student grade" stuff at the local music shops. One of the Walmart shops here recently had a fairly decent looking guitar and a reasonably complete drum (trap) set.

I'd be a bit worried about the trap set. It looked like a full size - not a kid toy, but my son destroyed two or three top quality sets in his brief career. A trap set faces a very though, and usually brief, life in a teenage rock garage band. (How do you break a Zildjian cymbal? I tried to drill a "crack stop" hole in one and burned up three tungsten carbide bits without getting through it.)

For those not familiar, Sam's Club is a "membership store" specializing in bulk quantity stuff, patronized by a lot of business who resell the stuff - especially restaurants. Good place for bulk groceries if you've got storage space, although the selection is a bit limited. It's a Walmart associated store. Similar to Costco in other parts of the country (US).

John