Tenor or low pitch?

[lhoover]

I keep seeing saxes on ebay and many times the seller doesn't tell you if it's a tenor ot not. Sometimes they will descibe it as a low pitch. Is this a c-melody sax? or what? I particularly interested in getting a Martin tenor and from many of these desciptions it seems hard to figure out what the horn actually is. From pictures I've seen the c-melody looks very similiar to a tenor. Is there any rule of thumb to tell the difference?

[Ritchie]

Low pitch refers to the tuning standard of the horn. Low pitch horns are designed for A=440 Hz. High pitch horns are for a higher tuning, I'm not sure about the number, but it's something around A=450 Hz. If you want to play a high pitch horn with the modern standard tuning of A=440 Hz by just pulling out the mouthpiece, you will be right in the middle of an intonation nightmare!

[stitch]

As Ritchie says - steer clear of high pitch horns, they're good only for decoration. C-mels are often visually similar to tenors, as most have a curved neck (some Conns have straight ones, but Conns - and Conn stencils - are marked 'C' or'T'); many eBay sellers don't know what they have, so the best way of telling is to ask the size of the instrument - tenors are around 31"/80cm from bell curve to neck curve, whereas c-mels are about 27"/69cm. There is often confusion when measuring, however, so it can be easier to ask how big the case is - tenor roughly 31"/79cm, c-mel 26"/66.

[Alan G]

Umm - after looking at C-Mels on ebay for some time, I think I've finally figured out how to tell just from the picture.

The length of the neck appears longer in relation to the body on a c-mel than it does on a tenor. Try this - mentally take the neck off the horn - and check the length against the body: on a C-Mel, the neck will be about the length of the tube from the bell flair to the neck receiver. On a tenor, the neck will appear much shorter.

Obviously - this is for curved necked C-Mels.

Regards - ALAN

[Johnny G]

I've noticed that the position of the lefthand pinky table relative to the bell is slightly different on altos, c-mels, and tenors. On c-mels, the entire table seems to be below the top edge of the bell. On tenors it is near the top of the bell, but a bit higher. Altos have the highest-appearing table relative to the bell. Hard to describe, but with practice you can develop your eye so that you can nearly always tell just from this feature alone.

[lhoover]

thanks for the info.