Attn all King experts......

[newking70]

What's the name of the King electric sax? I think it was based on the s-20

[silver-sax]

Have you the photo of this sax?

[newking70]

No sorry i dont have any pics but it was called the octavoice, thats about all i know.... i tried saxpics.com but the were no pics of that particular sax.... :cry:

[TenorReinier]

The Octavoice system is not realy an electric sax, but a piece of electronic equipment that can be attached to your sax in a rather destructive manner... Quote from saxpics.com:

Also, King introduced the OCTAVOICE system for their horns 'round about this time to compete with the Selmer Varitone system. It was a slight misstep for King to do this -- the Varitone never amounted to much and, as with the Varitone, you have to damage your neck to have the pickup system/audio-processor attached to your horn (note the little "cap" on the neck in this picture).


You can find this information at the king s20 page, as well as some pictures.

TenorReinier 8)

[T.S.]

Contrary to what has somehow become popular belief, the King Octavoice system only used a mount on the neck (the pick up fit into a fitting on the neck, and you could remove the pickup and there was small plug you could put into the fitting to play without the pick up mounted). Unlike the somewhat massive Selmer varitone set-up that was attached rather clumsily to the body, the King unit was tiny, and could be attached you your belt and had something like 3 or 4 slider controls. Although you could get some Eddie Harris like octave effects with this unit, it was very limited (as was the varitone). The only analog unit that I heard from this era that was any good was the Condor Innovex which both the late Eddie Harris and late Chris Wood of Traffic used.
I played a king neck with the plug put in, and it played just fine, also tried it with the unit, and it was fun, but already outdated by the Condor Unit and just arriving lyricons (an analogue precurser of the Yamaha EWI wind synths).

[T.S.]

That was supposed to read: Yamaha and EWI....Sorry...