[J.Max]

My Keilwerth SX-90R weighs 7.5 pounds...unfortunately, it has 200 lbs of dead weight behind it...

 

[bari_sax_diva]

Tenor: YTS 875 - 7.5 pounds (interesting that this is the same as the YTS-61)
Baritone: YBS-62 - 12.5 pounds

Whoohoo!

 

[robinsax]

tenor weight

I've found out that your neck strap could be your worst enemy on a long gig. It could make all the difference of the weight of your horn. Get comfortable one. I like the Neotech, but it makes my neck sweat. I'm currently using a pro tech.

 

[thehighend]

Here are accurate weights for modern altos and tenors from the "Big 5," all measured with a precision digital shop scale with 1/100 pound accuracy. The following listed weights are in pounds. All horns have standard lacquer finish unless noted otherwise. I will update as I have access to more saxes. The differences between saxes are pretty small, and probably not worth worrying about. Basically, tenors weigh 7.55 +/- 0.25 lbs, and altos weigh 5.55 +/- 0.10 lbs. Pretty insignificant differences, at least for those new pro level saxes from the "Big 5".

Tenors...
Yanagisawa 991: 7.32
Keilwerth Shadow (plated): 7.36
Selmer Reference 36: 7.41
B&S CJS: 7.61
B&S CJS (Earthtone): 7.62
Yamaha 875: 7.68
Yanagisawa 9932: 7.83

Altos...
Yanagisawa 9933: 5.50
Yamaha 875: 5.52
B&S CJS: 5.61
Yanagisawa 992: 5.62

 

[cornific]

I've found out that your neck strap could be your worst enemy on a long gig. It could make all the difference of the weight of your horn.

the strap is indeed is a big part of the equation.

The infinite dissection of minutiae. This IS absurd! Get a haircut,take off your glasses, wear a lighter shirt or do some neck excersizes. Get rid of that boat anchor metal 'piece. Skip lunch. Better yet, let's get someone to make a magnesium horn. Or carbon fiber. Or just sit down and learn keyboards. Or piccolo. I have dicked up my neck worse from sleeping than anything else.

Strap a bari on for awhile. That weapon will make a tenor feel like a toy.

in the past i have broken both of my wrists, in particular my scaphoid on the right hand side so i find that my right hand is quite sensative to hand position and weight. for me this sucks as some of my favorite horns like my 6m and sml leave me with either a sore thumb and or sore tendons in the back of my right hand. i never noticed any problems with my YTS 62 or a buffet alto i sometimes play but my 62 has been out of action for a while awaiting a rebuild so i picked up a series II that seems to be fine for me as far as ergo issues are concerned. my sml tenor is my favorite blowing horn as far as the air moving through the horn but it kills my right hand if i play it out front. that is how i like to blow. i have noticed that many of the players who are shown playing sml's have what i would consider to be unusual or convoluted posture when playing their horns. recently i removed the thumbhook on mine, mulligan style, in order to find a new balance point for the thumb and i intend to move the strap hook down about an inch and a quarter as others have done to see if i can make it a bit friendlier to my situation.

to get back on topic though, having the weights of various horns posted here is helpful, not as an obsession, but because it is a hard to come by piece of information that is valuable to some of us who may wish to know what the facts are, for what ever reason.

when i am at home in my studio i play bari and bass as much as i can. i hang the bari from a harness. i only play the bass supported by something other than myself.

when i get home i will weigh those horns as well. i have no idea who could be comfortable with my superba bass hanging from his/her neck. i have tried and for me it simply is a no go. i do love to play it though.

 

[candiceartisan]

Highend,
Any chance of getting the weights on a CJS alto and Allora Earthtone tenor?

 

[BobD]

I have a Yani T880. I don't know what it weighs but it's WAY heavier than a series III,VI,VII,10M,Ref36 or SX90R.

 

[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.

 

[Swingtone]

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.

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.

 

[Dr G]

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.

Interesting - I cannot stand the neck angle on a Super 20 tenor.

As you can see from earlier posts, it's lighter than most vintage horns due to the annealing mfg. process...

No. Annealing does not change the mass of the metal. All the atoms are still there. The density of the brass is constant.

 

[Swingtone]

edited

 

[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.

 

[Dr G]

For some reason, I just got a PM from Swingtone that thought I was "picking a fight". If anyone construes my last comment as adversarial, please let me know. I thought it was pretty factual and impersonal - certainly not an attack.

Ergos - I was noting that it was interesting (at least to me) that some find Super 20 so comfortable while they don't work at all for me. I naively used to believe that most horns were at least middle of the road.

"Light due to annealing" - most anyone that has been 'round SotW for the last several years knows that I try to sustain the truth about metals in music - whether it's cryotreatment, annealing, unobtanium or whatever.

I really don't understand what I did to irritate my fellow SotWer with that post. Swingtone, if you're reading this, please consider it a public apology. I did not intend any personal disrespect.

 

[Bill Mecca]

I didn't see it that way Dr. G.

To add to your comment on neck angles, I had a buddy that had an SBA, and I couldn't get a handle on the neck angle, almost hit my self where it counts! I also tried an LA SAX tenor, leopard spots if you must know, and the neck angle on that was truly whacked... he got a new, more reasonable neck. FWIW, my SDA might suffer from some pulldown, but its the only tenor I have ever really played for a long period, so it's what I'm used to and the measuring stick for everything else. (talk about a heavy horn!) I'll weight it some day. I have a Martin Indiana being rebuilt so we'll see how that compares when it gets back.

 

[Wind_Mill]

Bill,

Buffet Super Dynaction tenor = 3.50 kg or 7.7 lb

Just about the heaviest horn I own, and one of the few I still plan to keep indefinitely ..... the dark side, yes, but with a sweet ring throughout...

Only, I don't like the SDA ergos that much, and I think the weight aggravates them. I plan to relocate the neckstrap ring; that should just about take care of it, I think.....

 

[1saxman]

'all the extr keywork, most of which is not needed'

I hear what you're saying, Bootman. I particularly don't like the high F#. More and more makers are now offering tenors without it, so I must not be alone on this.

 

[Pakriff]

Yamaha 61 tenor: 7.48 pounds
Conn 1932 Transitional tenor: 6.82 pounds

 

[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

 

[thehighend]

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?

 

[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