So continues the exciting and dramatic decline and fall
of western civilization. Coming up in next week's
thrilling episode: the financial/industrial/political complex
sells out your entire democratic legacy to double down
on a hedge fund play! Meanwhile, I was still thinking...
It is sad to see this happen and I hope someone buys
it up & carries on successfully. Saxophones
are labor intensive and so far no one has found a way
to apply high tech to mitigate this. Guitars have enjoyed
a revolution in design/manufacture/pricing because CNC
machining brought tremendous economies. With saxophones
I'll bet we see this with injection molding or at least something
new that doesn't resemble the metal monsters we know & love.
If you've got money don't invest it in reviving B & S. Buy up
as many quality older horns and vault them away, it's a better bet.
It you do buy B&S build a $10K horn so good people will clamor for it.
It should not, but does surprise me at the amount of naive
complaint heard here about the price of instruments. Today's
prices for 'traditional', quality horns will sound impossibly cheap
in ten years or less, which is not forever. To me this is a lot
like the American expectation of cheap gasoline as a birthright.
If we'd have had real public shool music education in the US for
the last 30 years the demand for the best eastern, American
and European horns would be much greater, supporting the
industry that's now gone to XXXX. I mourn the loss of skilled
livelihoods and the obscure expertise that make 'magic '
instruments possible but it is inevitable.
