Klarinet Archive - Posting 000389.txt from 1999/12

From: David Glenn <notestaff@-----.de>
Subj: Re: [kl] saxophones ?
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 05:36:38 -0500

Bill Hausmann wrote:

> At 01:17 PM 12/13/1999 -0500, Don Longacre wrote:
> >Someday an instrument manufacturer is going to go back into quality
> >saxophones and get Mr Sax's instrument sounding right by putting
> >some metal in it and stop farming out the work to the natives on
> >Bora Bora or somesuch place. In clarinets, people like Eaton, Rossi
> >and Patricola aren't setting the corporate world on fire but they're
> >still building instruments the old fashioned way.
> >
> The pro horns, like the Selmer Paris models, Yamaha Pro Customs, etc., are
> very heavily built, with annealed bells and such. The Selmers are the
> R-13's of the saxophone world, the standard by which the others are judged.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I think, what Don meant, is not only the quality of the instrument. I have been
told that the older saxophones were made with a *parabolic* bore as opposed to
the *conical* bore of the newer saxophones. Apparently, it is not (yet) possible
to make a parabolic bore by machine and so it would be prohibitively expensive
to produce those wonderful, mellow sounding horns in this pricey day and age.
That's why firms like das Blashaus in Lucerne do things like putting modern
keywork on old saxes. They put a front F and a G# connection for the table keys
on my old 1924 Buescher but they also do complete new keywork.

The new saxes are great but they just don't sound quite like the old ones...

David

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