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Hi-
A repairman up near Niagara Falls, NY-a few years ago-got a Buescher Bass sax-missing one key--it was in a garbage can and he picked it from the garbage--a true story!! He also got an Over The Shoulder Civil War Tuba at a garage sale for $1--I did buy that from him (but for a lot more than 100 pennies...)
Regards-
mark

Any thoughts on these?
http://www.dillonmusic.com/HeleoCart/Pr ... SSSAX.aspx

Bob Kolada wrote:Any thoughts on these?

Who knows? Made by Instrument Makers Anonymous, or however you say that in Chinese, so it's not like they're staking their reputation on how well they put them together. Some might play OK, others not.

I played my bass sax yesterday evening, in rehearsal, Julius Keilwerth from probably the early '80s imported by Armstrong under an H Couf label. (Thought of it when I read a Tubenet comment this morning about awkwardness of `Barnum & Bailey's Favorite' for CC tuba - we played that one, and the bass part was as if written for bass sax - after a couple edits to restore the low Ab's that I'm sure the author must have intended.) No repairs or adjustments for years, and it was playing as smooth and easy as it always does, even though it gets carried around in a gig bag - essentially unprotected, but the case is a giant bummer.

That's a very good thing, because repairs & adjustments are a headache with a big saxophone. If it started playing rough and needed work, I would try to do what I can myself before taking it anywhere. I can find leaks, re-float a pad, replace cork, but key mechanism adjustments I'm not so sure whether I could trust myself to do the right thing. But technicians around here, that I have any experience with, will either take months to get around to your big saxophone, or they'll do a bunch of chargeable stuff but fail to make it play any better, so you end up doing the rest of the work yourself anyway.

So a saxophone that will hold up to routine abuse will save you a lot of grief. Big saxophones are subject to the same laws of physics that make the giant ants of B movies impossible in real life - the bigger they get, the more delicate they are. Along with "plays great", I would want to check that a sax "stays great" thanks to sturdy, well engineered key mechanism.

Bob Kolada wrote:Any thoughts on these?

Oh yeah, another thought! Mouthpieces. "Use a bass or (large bore) bari mouthpiece", he says. OK, here's $5000 for a bass saxophone, now could you show me your "large bore" bari mouthpieces? No? But at least I could try a couple bass sax mouthpieces ... no? Oh well! I'll be able to mail-order mouthpieces like everyone else does, because at least I know the shank size is "bass or (large bore) bari". What do you mean, not only is there no such think as "large bore" bari, there is no standard bass sax shank size?

I have only one slender clue what the Chinese may be up to with bass sax shank - a presumably Chinese mouthpiece I got a few years ago. A non-descript crudely milled brass mouthpiece with the silver plating surfaced off on the rails, acquired via ebay from a guy out in the weeds in western Oregon who apparently picks up samples at trade shows and auctions them off. This mouthpiece takes a big shank, like my bass sax has - or better, had, before I removed the end ring and squashed the cork down to take mouthpieces like Selmer or Woodwind. Older US made bass saxes, like this Buescher, probably take a normal bari mouthpiece.

Or rather, they may take a bari mouthpiece's shank size. But intonation in saxophones depends on the internal dimensions of the mouthpiece, the "chamber", in a fairly critical way. I bored out several old style bari mouthpieces for my saxophone, but in no case did they play acceptably in tune; on that Buescher, mouthpiece like that might have been the best hope for a mouthpiece that would play in tune, hard to say. In the end, I actually prefer the mouthpiece that came with my sax. But a mouthpiece makes a huge difference on the saxophone, much more than it does on brass instruments in my opinion.

And then, ah ... reeds. Don't get me started!