The Odyssey Continues
Having found out that the price to beat for a fine-quality new tenor sax is somewhere around $1275, I have continued my search and broadened it to include several vintage tenor models from back in the day. I have become particularly interested in the Buffet-Crampon Dynaction and Super Dynaction horns from the 1940s-1960s. When I was in high school, my sax teacher played a Buffet Dynaction alto, and the sound was fantastic. Truly dark and rich with just a hint of that old-school jazz stuffiness. I never played it myself, but I heard it every week for five years... so I feel like I have a pretty good idea for how they stack up.
As a side note to all the non-Sax Heads out there, the benchmark to which all tenor saxophones are compared is a horn by Selmer called the Mark VI. These horns (obviously, no longer produced) are so excellent that Selmer itself issued a newly-designed horn that mimics all the design characteristics of the Mark VI. Both a vintage Mark VI and a new Selmer re-visualization of the Mark VI can be had for anywhere between $4000 and $7000, depending on the vintage horn's condition or the degree to which you're getting gouged by your local Selmer dealer.
These Buffets, however, were designed to compete directly with the original Mark VI and the previous Selmer model (the Super Balanced Action), and, according to the Community, they do. As far as I'm concerned, the sound is nearly identical. The thing that would be different, of course, is the keywork, and that can only be explored by playing the horns. Here's the thing: whereas a mint-condition Mark VI with a desirable serial number will cost you upwards of $5000, these Buffets -- largely because of small-batch production and smaller dealer networks in the US -- will cost under $1500 in identical condition. It's as though these horns are sleepers. And they're pretty to look at too.
So it's just another thing to think about. All this searching has led me to wonder how people made these kinds of decisions before the Internet was around to assist them. Did you just ask around and hope that the people you know are knowledgeable about whatever it is you need to know? And how did you buy things like a new saxophone in those Dark Times? Would I, for example, have had to make a purpose-designed trip to New York or LA and then poke around all the sax shops in town until I found what I was looking for? I don't mean to sound like a baby, but that's awfully inconvenient. What a remarkable modern age we live in.
As a side note to all the non-Sax Heads out there, the benchmark to which all tenor saxophones are compared is a horn by Selmer called the Mark VI. These horns (obviously, no longer produced) are so excellent that Selmer itself issued a newly-designed horn that mimics all the design characteristics of the Mark VI. Both a vintage Mark VI and a new Selmer re-visualization of the Mark VI can be had for anywhere between $4000 and $7000, depending on the vintage horn's condition or the degree to which you're getting gouged by your local Selmer dealer.
These Buffets, however, were designed to compete directly with the original Mark VI and the previous Selmer model (the Super Balanced Action), and, according to the Community, they do. As far as I'm concerned, the sound is nearly identical. The thing that would be different, of course, is the keywork, and that can only be explored by playing the horns. Here's the thing: whereas a mint-condition Mark VI with a desirable serial number will cost you upwards of $5000, these Buffets -- largely because of small-batch production and smaller dealer networks in the US -- will cost under $1500 in identical condition. It's as though these horns are sleepers. And they're pretty to look at too.
So it's just another thing to think about. All this searching has led me to wonder how people made these kinds of decisions before the Internet was around to assist them. Did you just ask around and hope that the people you know are knowledgeable about whatever it is you need to know? And how did you buy things like a new saxophone in those Dark Times? Would I, for example, have had to make a purpose-designed trip to New York or LA and then poke around all the sax shops in town until I found what I was looking for? I don't mean to sound like a baby, but that's awfully inconvenient. What a remarkable modern age we live in.
posted by Buckwalter at 10:22 AM
1 Comments:
I believe in days of yore (when you had a 4.0 Grade Point Average at Yardale), saxophone desirers went out into the wild, found the saxophone that pleased their loins the most, hit it on the mouthpiece with a club and dragged it off into their caves to practice by the hair. That's one of the reasons saxophones don't have hair anymore -- evolution at work.
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