[pjwsax]

i love this thread!

Thank you thank you to everyone who is posting! I'm going to weigh my horns and post the numbers as soon as I get my hands on a scale that is accurate. I searched for info about weight since I'm interested in getting new horn(s) and unfortunately have been having some issues with tendon pain that have forced me to do some strange things with neckstraps (using two and rigging up a second hook, for starters!) to be able to keep playing. I have a harness on order and with any luck that will help, but all of a sudden the weight of different horns is a big deal. Other players occasionally pick up my (vintage) tenor and comment about how *light* it is compared with theirs, and I've been worried about whether I'll have to avoid certain horns because of weight.

I actually went through all the posts so far and have compiled a list of all the numbers everyone has posted in an attempt to get something approaching a good summary of all this. If anyone's interested, I'd be happy to post some of the resulting statistics once I get them calculated.

 

[pjwsax]

Yes, I am very interested. Another consideration where pain is concerned is ergos. Some of the older horns may be lighter but cause more pain because of inferior ergos...but I'm sure you already know this.

Since that's at least one interested party, I'll be sure to post once I've finished working it all out.

If you can't afford a Selmer Mark VI, I have found the King horns to be the best in the comfort department, especially the Super 20. As you can see from earlier posts, it's lighter than most vintage horns due to the annealing mfg. process, and seem to have been made for people with big hands, like myself. I have not found any vintage American horns that have better ergos. I hear the Martin's aren't bad, but I think those are on the heavy side.

Interesting, since I am currently playing a King tenor from 1927. My problems are definitely due to a combo of both weight and ergonomics. I'm hoping the harness will fix the weight issue for me, and hopefully then I'll be able to find a more permanent fix for the ergos part of it... When I do get to where I'm getting a new horn, I know that I'm going to need to play it for a good long stretch of time to get a good feel for the ergos before I make the final decision.

 

[pjwsax]

Statistics

I've compiled all the weights given in this thread so far (as of October 20, 2006 @ 19:00 EST) and have worked out the statistics. Keep in mind that these results are only as accurate as what was posted. First, here's the results of all the numbers given:

Tenors
sample size: 42
minimum: 6.000 lbs / 2.722 kg
average: 7.312 lbs / 3.317 kg
maximum: 8.375 lbs / 3.799 kg
range: 2.375 lbs / 1.077 kg
std dev: 0.417 lbs / 0.189 kg

Altos
sample size: 9
minimum: 4.500 lbs / 2.041 kg
average: 5.257 lbs / 2.384 kg
maximum: 6.000 lbs / 2.722 kg
range: 1.500 lbs / 0.680 kg
std dev: 0.523 lbs / 0.237 kg

Baris
sample size: 3
minimum: 9.000 lbs / 4.082 kg
average: 10.833 lbs / 4.914 kg
maximum: 12.500 lbs / 5.670 kg
range: 3.500 lbs / 1.588 kg
std dev: 1.756 lbs / 0.796 kg

And for simplicities sake...
68% of all the altos weigh between 4.734 and 5.780 lbs (2.147 and 2.622 kg)
68% of all the tenors weigh between 6.896 and 7.729 lbs (3.128 and 3.506 kg)

Obviously the numbers for tenor are going to be more accurate than those for alto because there were almost four times as many tenors weighed. I would take the numbers for bari with a large grain of salt, since there are only 3 of them in the sample and there was a pretty big difference between their weights.

In the process of compiling these numbers I noticed that there was a wide range of accuracy in the weighing methods. In an effort to determine how much this may or may not effect the results, I went through everyone's descriptions of what they used to weigh their horns (if they even mentioned how they weighed them) and assigned a "score" to the weighing method. Using this, I was able to re-run the statistics with some of the least accurately weighed horns excluded. Rather than ask everyone to append their posts with a description of how they weighed them, I simply excluded the ones that were more than likely not very accurate (i.e. guesswork or rounded off more than about 0.2kg / 7 ounces) and gave the benefit of the doubt to those who didn't describe how they weighed the horns. The result of excluding these was minimal (i.e. the average alto and tenor weight changed by about 1%, or 0.06 lbs / 0.0275 kg), in my opinion, and only ended up removing 3 altos and 6 tenors from the samples. Only including the horns that were weighed very accurately reduced the sample size of tenors to only 18, but still only changed the averages by a little over 1%; not so much as to be useful to our discussion at this point.

If anyone is interested in more info about how I calculated this stuff, just ask away (or PM me). If anyone wants the raw data (spreadsheet), PM me and we'll work out how to get you the file.

Enjoy!
-peter

 

[pjwsax]

Peter, I am guessing here, but I think most people are interested in a comparison of different specific models. Such a comparison should be done on the same scale, of course. Sample averages don't speak to which models are heavy, and which are light. But, at least you had some fun with Excel, right?

Good point. Here are the numbers for the tenors only, since there weren't enough examples of altos or baris posted. Most models only had one example posted, and those brands that had many postings tended to span a wide range of time (i.e. Buescher: 5 tenor postings, 5 different models, spanning over 50 years of production). There were a few horns that had a few weights given for the same model, but not many. As such, these averages are highly suspect, but here goes...

All examples of a given brand (where there was more than one example):

B&S 7.605 lbs / 3.449 kg
Buescher 6.992 lbs / 3.171 kg
Conn 7.064 lbs / 3.204 kg
Keilworth 7.188 lbs / 3.261 kg
King 7.158 lbs / 3.247 kg
Martin 7.059 lbs / 3.202 kg
Selmer 7.251 lbs / 3.289 kg
Yamaha 7.520 lbs / 3.411 kg
Yanagisawa 7.490 lbs / 3.397 kg

...and the few where multiple examples of a given model were posted...

B&S Chicago Jazz Earthtone 7.602 lbs / 3.448 kg
Conn 10M 7.094 lbs / 3.218 kg
Keilworth SX90R 7.131 lbs / 3.235 kg
Yamaha YTS 61 7.459 lbs / 3.383 kg

 

[pjwsax]

You forgot to include the Keilwerth nickel/silver tenor, as I have posted on page 2:

"My JK SX90R nickel-silver weighs 2.9 kg, in agreement with what the Keilwerth website says."

Actually, your horn is included in the average of the three SX90R's posted:

Keilworth SX90R 7.131 lbs / 3.235 kg

I did not list it separately in my last post because yours was the only posting that specifically mentioned "nickel-silver", and I was only posting averages.

This seems to be by far the lightest tenor sax tested.

You are probably right. Pinnman posted a Buescher Aristocrat 200 with a weight of 6 lbs (which is 2.722 kg), however he did say that was without the neck. How much does a tenor neck weigh? ;-)

And since we're talking extremes, the award for the heaviest tenor posted to-date goes to...Captain Beeflat's Rampone & Cazzani R1 at 8.375 lb (3.799 kg)