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Maybe the engraved Naked Lady on the bell???

The period they had this engraving Conn made good instruments?

imperialbari wrote:The period they had this engraving Conn made good instruments?

Well, at least we know the engravers were happy

From the Conn Loyalist website,
http://cderksen.home.xs4all.nl/ConnArticle43.html" target="_blank :

"Naked Lady. There is no Naked Lady model. "Naked Lady" refers to the style of engraving that often appeared on the instruments. In spite of persistent rumor to the contrary, Dr. Margaret Downie-Banks, an acknowledged expert on all things Elkhart-Conn, insists that the presence or absence of a so-called "Naked Lady" engraving or the degree of nakedness has absolutely no relation to the instrument in terms of quality or otherwise. These "Naked Lady" engravings are usually found on "Standard" series saxophones, hence the incorrect idea that the engraving signifies that model and/or a better built instrument. The Naked Lady engraving can also frequently be found on Conn euphoniums and sousaphones, but only very rarely on Conn cornets, trumpets or trombones of the same period."

The engraving pattern with the head-and-shoulders of a lady is the most common "Naked Lady" engraving, and was on the vast majority of Conn saxophones and low brass from about 1931 or so until sometime in the early 1950's. This coincides with a large portion of the time that Mr. Greenleaf was in charge of C.G. Conn, a time when Conn was making a lot of very good instruments. The earliest "Naked Lady" engraving that I've encountered on a tuba is on a 1929 46K sousaphone, which has the older, more Victorian, or lacy-looking engraving, and the large likeness of a lady with very long and curly hair framed inside a heart.

Hand-engraving was always time-consuming and caused a bit of a bottle-neck in the factory production, and after WWII became less ornate, finally being replaced by machine stamps, acid-etching inside essentially a silkscreen, and now laser etching on some instruments. Only a very few new instruments still have hand-engraved bells.

Well, their were Conn "naked ladies" and Conn "naked ladies". The first were engraved full height when the Stenberg brothers were doing custom engraving on Conn instruments:


Then there were the bust views that were done years later as part of the Conn logo:

Which ones are you talking about? The former is much earlier than the latter...

Our Nekkid Lady, Betty, was just the head shot, not the full frontal!!

This is the stuff of legend, probably started by jazz musicians in the 20s and 30s, where the more the naked lady shows, the better the horn. Might have been Lester Young who started the rumor. That topless gal with the wavy hair, inside the home plate pentagon, showed various amounts of nipple over the years, but always at least a hint of cleavage. The earlier naked ladies were full-on water and forest nymphs with a gossamer veil, reserved for special order and artiste finish options from Conn. I have a gold burnished C Melody sax from '23 that has two windblown dragons up the sides of the bell, and a huge parrot sitting on it's perch right in the middle. Special order options.

My take has been that "most" sellers referring to a Naked Lady model are really referring to something other sellers refer to as the Lady Face model (Windshields 2nd pic). Indeed it means nothing except that it must have been produced in the period roughly between the 30's and the 50's, a fact which more accurately (but not entirely precisely) can be ascertained from the serial number. Duh.

I think it is a sellers ploy to sucker a potential buyer into thinking that they're really getting something special, but that's just my cynical pessimistic view.

Considering that the quality of Conn instruments from this period was very admirable one could argue that the buyer might very well be purchasing something that IS very special indeed. Or it might not.

The skinny; a Conn Naked Lady model has a bell engraving with at least half of a Naked Lady.
'nuff said?

It's a pity that wonderful engraving was wasted on a saxophone.

However, the good thing about "custom options"is that they are ALWAYS available. You just have to find someone who can do it. What are they going to say, "sorry, it can't be done?"

PS -- all of these engravings are truly works of art. Almost like tattoos on skin that never gets old and wrinkly.