are any of the cheap chinese curved soprano's halfway decent.

Pete: That well may be, but the problem as I see it, is finding one (a cheapie that plays well).

Where I live, there are several well-stocked music stores within a days' drive. None deal in cheap saxophones. They are the ones we like to call "inexpensive", not cheap. Yes, they also have the high-end models. A buyer could go there, try a bunch and walk out with a great soprano.

But if a cheap soprano is the goal, the buyer starts looking for a cheap saxophone with the characteristics you've experienced. Not easy to find in these parts. The next step is to go to the Internet and order one.

Therein lies the problem. One could spend the price of a new Selmer looking for that occasional good player - unless the shipper offers a return policy. And few do that.

Littlemanbighorn's question was a good one. What brand? Even then, we all know that those brands aren't available everywhere, although there could be similar horns under different brand names. But with cheapies, one example may play great, the other one may play lousy.

It is my opinion that a soprano buyer would be MUCH better off buying a known brand and spending the money for it rather than trying to pay as little as possible for that occasional cheapie that may play decently. This of course assumes that the buyer has a limited budget. I realize there are folks who can afford to buy MANY cheapies in the expectation of finding one good one. DAVE

Princeganon, I would ask you a couple questions: 1) Have you played soprano much? 2) Why a curvy?

If you already play the sop and have a good horn you don't want to throw into a backpack, will the habits required to play a cheap horn conflict with your serious playing? If this is a horn on which you want to learn, you might want to bump the price up to at least $1000 to get one that can play in tune.

When I was shopping for a first soprano, I considered the curvies. But it became clear to me that it is easier to build a straight sop at a low price than a curved sop with its fancy linkage. You can get a soft case for a straight sop that will be easy to carry to the park. Throw in a tuning meter while you're at it.

The birds and squirrels will like your serenades.

I got my Antigua Winds sop from Kessler's in Vegas and am very happy with it after about 18 months.

I tried a Dong Xing curved soprano in Shanghai last autumn. The shop was in a street with lots of instrument shops, one of those long streets from the Bund and inwards, I think it was Jinling Donglu. Anyway, the sax cost only about 200 or 250 dollars. It had some problems with the lower notes from D and downwards, but who knows if this might easily have been fixed by a technician. My impression was that the intonation didn't seem very bad, but I only had about 5 minutes testing it and didn't use a tuner or anything. Surely, the Yanagisawa (SC992) I got later on was better than this Dong Xing, which is reasonable, considering the price difference. Possibly, durability may be a problem if the quality is as reported by others here, but my feeling was that the Dong Xing as it appeared in the shop would be useable for practicing at least.

I bought my curved Academy soprano around two months ago - After much playing I can report - The construction is good and strong, keywork is pretty stiff; finish is good. The blowing is very easy indeed, but the intonation is not good - it goes flat below bottom D..... over a semitone flat on bottom C# and bottom C and it improved things a bit...... it's now only a semitone flat ! I get around this by simply playing D when I want to hear C#, C# when I want to hear C, and so on !
The middle octave, as you ascend, begins to go sharp. It's easy to "blow down" to the correct pitch as the sharpness isn't too bad, and the embouchure is correspondingly eased too because of this.
The intonation is the only thing that lets this horn down. Maybe a professional set-up would largely alleviate these problems, but I can live with them and it would probably cost at least half of what I paid for the thing anyway. By the way, the tone is fat and warm, unlike the half-dozen sporanos I've owned in the past, some of them much dearer than this one, and the bottom bell tones are actually in tune and fat and full in tone.
The case is crap - it's a semi-soft zip case. When I received it, the case had been subjected to being buried under other mail and had bent the LH pinkie keys out of true, which took all of ten seconds to rectify, but the case definately lets the instrument down as it doesn't protect it like it should.
Richard