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SaxMan! [and everyone else!]

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Very cool! It would be even cooler if they were playing vintage horns, too. Then again, only a sax player whose "daily driver" is 70 years old could really nitpick on that point.
 
Speaking of vintage horns, I just found out what my old King Super 20 is worth. (SaxMan will appreciate this) I might consider trading it for a super nice Sprite or two but that would be almost like selling one of the kids.
 
Is your Super 20 a Silversonic? Those are some beautiful horns. The Super 20s are great Rock and Roll horns...you can really get that Texas Tenor sound. I hear you on not selling it. Horns become extensions of you.
 
Yes it is a Silver Sonic. And having to compete with guitars before the days of portable mikes I added a Brillhart 5* stainless for a little more projection. It help pay my way through college.
 
Bayless said:
Yes it is a Silver Sonic. And having to compete with guitars before the days of portable mikes I added a Brillhart 5* stainless for a little more projection. It help pay my way through college.
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Nice!

Love the old horns. I do miss my old Conn 12M Bari sometimes, but I'm just not a horn player anymore and it gets good use with a friend of mine. I've even got visitation rights still. :grin:
 
Happy to find so many sax players here.
 
Sadly I've sold my woodwinds. Once upon a time I owned a Selmer Mk. VI alto, and my pride and joy when I played a Buffet R13 Bb clarinet.
 
coldplugs said:
I feel left out in this crowd. I've never even touched a sax. My mother made me take accordion lessons, promising that I'd be popular at parties.

I probably didn't practice enough....
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Don't feel bad. In Junior High I wanted to play the Sax soon bad! But I got stuck with the Oboe.
 
Basil said:
Don't feel bad. In Junior High I wanted to play the Sax soon bad! But I got stuck with the Oboe.
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Just as well I firmly believe in no sax until after marriage.
 
You may laugh, but there actually is a shortage of Oboe players with major symphonies, and qualified Oboe players are making very good money.

Among my collection of instruments is an Oboe. I pull it out and play it every now and again. Coming from something as free blowing as a saxophone, it feels like your head is going to explode while trying to play through the tiny bocal. One of these days, I'll take the time to learn to play it right.
 
My oldest friend, now 82, is playing the best tenor sax of his life. I set up a gig next week with a professional bass player at my house. I'll be playing piano - strictly self-taught and can't read a note of music nut I don't hit wrong chords except by accident. My old Steinert (knockoff of a Steinway from the 1930s) is hard to keep in tune these days but still fun to play. We'll play some jazz and some old standards, maybe a Beatles tune or so. That's about as new as we get.
 
I never played the clarinet. The fingering is just to "strange." And I can't even consider the oboe but I do understand that good players are highly in demand. Actually, my real instrument was the trumpet but there wasn't much demand for that when I needed to pay for college so took up the tenor and alto sax for a while.
 
I started on Clarinet and switched to saxophone. It's definitely much easier going in that direction. Flute and sax share a lot of common fingerings, so that was also an easy transition, although I can totally make myself light headed after playing flute for a few minutes.

Tenor is still my main horn. I've owned a few over the years. After learning on the obligatory Bundy II, my parents bought me a Mark VI when I was a freshman in college. I had it until it got stolen about 10 years ago. That still smarts, but at least I had the horn insured with an escalator clause. I ended up replacing it with the '45 Buescher Big B, buying a Yamaha Motif 7 keyboard and still had cash to put in my pocket. Along the way, I've owned a '27 Conn Chu that I sold about a year ago, and still have a beater '52 Conn 10M that is my backup horn.
 
Doesn't everyone get light headed after playing the flute for a few minutes?

The shop I worked at in high school had an old satin silver Buescher True Tone C melody sax that was pretty cool. I really liked the tone of it, I kind of wonder why they don't make them anymore.
 
The C-melody horn was what they called a "parlor" horn. Before there was TV, radio, or even phonograph players, members of the family would gather in the conservatory and play sheet music. By putting a horn in C, the player could read off the piano score. Once all these newfangled gizmos came out, "music night" became a thing of the past, as did the demand for the C horns (most manufacturers also made a C-soprano).

C-melody horns were generally not pleasant sounding horns compared to the more standard Bb and Eb horns. The later Conn C melody horns were generally considered the best of the bunch. They are still fairly plentiful on eBay, although they are generally overpriced.

I owned a '26 Buescher True Tone C-melody for a while, but eventually sold it, simply because I really didn't have a use for it. I hated the True Tone's double pearl octave key and thumbrest, it used to pinch my fingers. I prefer the '30s and 40's Aristocrats through the Model 156. IMHO, the Buescher Aristocrat is probably the best bang for your buck in the vintage horn market. Most collectors and players want the Buescher 400, for good reason, too. The Aristocrat was considered a "classical horn" a la Siguard Rascher. The exacting nature of classical music meant that these horns had to be set up well in terms of intonation and if you set them up right, they make great jazz and rock horns.

Bueschers generally fetch less money than comparable Conns of the same time period. Even though they cost less, they are not the lesser horn.
 
I had an old C-Melody many years ago. It was worn out and used up when given to me. Not worth repairing. Hated the darn thing and gave it to my B-I-L. He learned to hate it too.
 
Outstanding music and musicians. I play horn, not one of the cool instruments- but that's where I met my wife; sitting together in the horn section in college.
 
Had to endure piano lessons starting sometime around age six... mother played and thought it important to drill her kids. gah. Her side of the family were the musicians, brother played the clarinet ("Flight of the Bumblebee" level) and a younger sis played oboe in her high school days. Later I got half-interested in the clarinet and managed to squeak thru a junior high band. Put that down and picked up a set of golf clubs to join the HS golf team.

Now I couldn't plink out "Twinkle, Twinkle" onna piano or blow a note on a clarinet to save my life. But I play the CD/DVR like a PRO! :smirk:
 
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