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Pick an argument with Rick...or pet your cat...Petting a cat tends to have a calming effect.

but, neither petting Rick nor picking an argument with a cat are calming. Of course, I haven't tried either of those...

So I wonder if anybody ever bought this?

MA, drooling again...the band I play in has a bass sax, well-played (i.e., in tune, not "honky") and I have to admit I'm jealous. The lady is about my size, too.

There are probably more bass saxes around here--the Philadelphia area--than anywhere on earth. The Mummers String Bands nearly all use at least one bass sax, many obvious relics from the early days of Mummer-dom. They do present quite a sound along with all the other saxes and the marching string basses.

A guy in the local community band has a really nice Conn bass sax, and gets a good tone out of it. Get this: we think we are rather indulgent in having multiple instruments. He also has an Eb bari sax, a regular Bb bass clarinet, an Eb contra bass clarinet, AND a BBb sub contrabass clarinet. He gets a great tone out of all of them, but my favorite is his Selmer Eb contra clarinet of solid rosewood. And he can get whatever you want or need out of all of them. He actually brought them all in rotation to band one season so that the director could pick the one that best suited the band. Of course, the director picked the Eb contra clarinet, as much because he had parts in the repertoire for it and didn't have to re-write something for it, like he had to do for the bass sax.

I'm not sure how I wandered onto this old thread, but it happened.

At the time I didn't know this anecdote: A local (St Louis) guy who is fairly well-known, an amazing musician, and a great man to boot, owns both Bob Short's Martin from the 50s Turk Murphy bands, but Adrian Rollini's bass sax. A lot of history in those two horns! The guy also plays plectrum banjo very well, and can hold his own playing piano.