Musical Notes

Well, here's something you don't see every day. A brand new Selmer Mark Vi alto saxophone!

They are interesting horns; they feature a number of design elements unique to the Supreme while also blending in popular aspects from horns of the past.

Fun fact: the 10M is also referred to as the Ladyface, due to the portrait of a woman engraved on the bell!

Recently, I had a chance to do an overhaul on a Conn 28M. Conn is such an interesting company to me, particularly in how they designed their saxophones.

Typically, replacing pads is virtually a non-issue. Some older, larger instruments use pad sizes that are no longer in production by any modern instrument repair supplier. Sometimes the only solution is to modify an existing pad to fit your needs. Here is a full description of that process.

For a brief period of time in the 1920's, Conn offered colored enamel finish on their saxophones. While we have seen a few colored enamel altos, by far the most instruments that were released in this finish were C-melody horns. Here we see 3 Conn C-melody saxophones in different colors of enamel. Note that two are the classic Conn straight neck C-melody, while one is the older style curved neck.

Over the past few years that I’ve been working with Matt, his business model has presented a host of situations that would be simultaneously rewarding and infuriating to any tech, but occasionally it grants me the opportunity to see something truly unique.

A few days ago, I came across a couple of saxophones that I had never seen or heard of before and they looked really, really interesting. I had heard of the Romero System before, but only on clarinets. Here's a little information on these instruments.

The bass saxophone is one of the largest members of the saxophone family—larger than the more commonly encountered baritone saxophone.