yes! same result with hostname.
I don’t use the manjaro gnome firewall app & it is not enabled.
However, after checking the basic guide again, it seems I do have apparmour.
I applied the fix sudo aa-complain /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.smbd & restarted samba, but still no change.
Is there any samba errors? for example in dmesg or journalctl or if samba has its own log
Interesting! samba does have a log folder & I can see a log named caladan.log ~ that is the hostname of my WinPC, from whom I have tried to connect many times. The log has multiple ‘permission denied’.
[2022/10/13 11:45:12.591256, 0] ../../source3/smbd/smb2_service.c:168(chdir_current_service)
chdir_current_service: vfs_ChDir(/mnt/SSD500/rico/Music) failed: Permission denied. Current token: uid=65534, gid=65534, 1 groups: 65534
So this must mean that samba is receiving the connection requests at least. & perhaps a permissions issue is the problem as some previous comments did mention. Maybe the blank smbclient is a redherring.
ALSO: log.nmdb has the following, many times. .102 is my Pi, .10 is Manjaro
[2022/10/14 12:06:43.692403, 0] ../../source3/nmbd/nmbd_namequery.c:109(query_name_response)
query_name_response: Multiple (2) responses received for a query on subnet 192.168.1.10 for name WORKGROUP<1d>.
This response was from IP 192.168.1.102, reporting an IP address of 192.168.1.102.
I agree, interesting!
Can you try connect a client with a different user than on linux, so its asked for a password?
Also you may need to set the share or the mount point owner to match a particular permission group …
BOOM!! I can now connect.
Here is what happened.
(just to let you know I have never used windows before for more than 10 mins, so this is absolute hell for me - lol)
From win11 I tried the explorer address bar \\192.168.1.10\sulaco_music & this is the main way I have been trying , but it was still the usual permission denied error. This is the method which worked for adding RaspberryPi samba share.
Then I tried : right-click ThisPC, add network Location, it wont accept smb:// so I tried the same \\192 style. Still rejected.
Then I right-click Map Network Drive. I have also tried this method several time before without success.
This time I entered the login for Manjaro user. I have also done this before & it didn’t work.
This time however it worked…
So along the journey of this thread, some small detail has changed & now it works, but I’m not entirely sure what.
Microsoft have to keep an air of mystery somehow …
Nice result!
And thanks for writing up detailed steps 
Thanks @winnie @Mirdarthos @linux-aarhus @mishmosh
All of you gave very valuable assistance. Finally working, although not exactly sure what the issue was in the end, just happy its working & I learned something. 