seems like the sax companys would like to keep this info secret as does HP computers and Dell computers made in the same factory on the same assembly line in Juarez, Mexico just across the border from where i live.
I wonder if most saxes from the orient - india stripped down of any keys, rods etc would all look the same without the finishing touches on them
google saxophone mfg taiwan and you come up with this
http://taiwanreview.nat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xitem=24481&ctnode=128&mp=1
A Town Hitting the Right Note
Chang Lien-cheng (front right) started to make a saxophone after the only one his band possessed, pictured here, was damaged in a house fire. (Courtesy of Chang Lien-cheng Saxophone Museum)
Publication Date：08/01/2007
Byline：KELLY HER
A small town in Taiwan is striving to maintain its legacy of saxophone-making while using it to bring local prosperity.
A voice-over from an automobile TV commercial states: "There is a group of people in Houli; they not only play music, but also make musical instruments and enable people around the world to hear the sweet sound produced by the saxophones they make. A splendid city must be inhabited by a group of brilliant people ...."
This advertisement, first broadcast in late 2003, turned out to be a fine publicity stunt. Until then, Houli, an agricultural township in central Taiwan, had been known for little more than its flower and fruit plantations. Even in Taiwan few people knew about Houli saxophones. While the town appears to be an unlikely place for producing the instruments, it houses the largest cluster of saxophone makers on the island.
According to unofficial statistics, made-in-Taiwan saxophones account for one third of global production of the instrument, with an export value of NT$700 million (US$21 million) a year. Most of the instruments are manufactured on an OEM basis so many end-users are unaware of their Taiwanese origins.
The relationship between Houli and saxophones could be traced back to 1947, when a group of young music lovers, including Chang Lien-cheng, Chang Chi-pan and Chang Teng-hui, organized a jazz band and were often invited to perform at local events. At that time, musical instruments were luxuries and mostly imported from Japan. A house fire, however, later destroyed the only saxophone they had.
Out of his great passion for music, Chang Lien-cheng tried to find out how to make a saxophone. He spent the next three months taking the twisted and blackened instrument apart piece by piece--nearly 400 in all--and making meticulous drawings of each piece and the way they fitted together.
Subsequently, he took a strip of brass from under a sliding door in his home to make into saxophone keys and melted down an old silver coin to use as the soldering material. During the process, a brass bar rebounded and hit Chang in the right eye, blinding him in that eye.
Nevertheless Chang kept going and after three years of self-study and numerous tests, he completed Taiwan's first saxophone from scratch and successfully sold it to a musician from the Philippines. The deal was lucrative enough for Chang to start accepting apprentices and venture into saxophone manufacturing as a business.
Family Businesses
Over the years, Chang, who died in 1986, passed on his skills unselfishly to interested learners, and many went on to open their own factories. In the 1970s, business boomed and the 30-odd saxophone factories in Houli produced about 30,000 instruments a year.
Saxophones have four common types: soprano, alto, tenor and baritone. Judging only by appearance, basically the longer the neck is, the lower the sound. As they are wind instruments, they can be divided into two categories: brass and wood. The former have metallic mouthpieces while the latter have mouthpieces made of wood or bamboo. Houli is famous for making the wooden type.
Manufacturing a saxophone is a complex process involving cutting, hammering, cooling, soldering, finishing (plating or lacquering), buffing and assembly. Good craftsmanship is required, given the subtle relationship between the rods, holes and pads, and final assembly affects the performance of the instruments considerably.
The sophistication of Houli's handmade saxophones has since won the recognition of several international musical instrument companies. However, due to their small-scale operations and lack of marketing channels, domestic makers generally rely on agents to solicit orders for them.
The saxophone factories in Houli are largely run by family members out of their own homes, sometimes with no outside help and rarely with more than three or four employees. They suffered a significant setback in the 1980s when a large company, K.H.S. Musical Co., transformed itself from a seller of musical instruments into a manufacturer, subsequently starting mass production. Several companies were wiped out then.
Through the division of labor, Houli saxophone makers have been able to survive fierce competition. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
"Twenty years ago, we almost changed our career track when orders from K.H.S. were called off suddenly. That dealt us a great blow," says Chang Wan-fu, who, with his wife Lin Mei-yun, runs Wanlifu Instrument Co. Born in 1953, Chang started to learn saxophone-making as an apprentice when he was 13 and set up his own business at the age of 23.
"My husband had cultivated a solid basis in saxophone-making through a decade-long, strenuous apprenticeship. That's all he was good at and interested in," Lin says. "So we decided that I should go out to sell garments to support the family, while he stayed at home, continuing to polish his skills and make saxophones. If that didn't work out in two years, then we would give up and switch to another business."
Though purchase orders were patchy, Chang's fine craftsmanship helped him secure a few valued clients. One of his Japanese customers even invited him to set up a factory in South Korea. Unwilling to take local skills overseas, Chang turned down the potentially lucrative proposal.
Streamlining Production
"We'd been making saxophones in Houli from generation to generation ... they were a legacy of this town. I felt obligated to keep the flame burning here," he says. At the time he thought, "we could stay afloat, providing that we continually upgraded our techniques and product quality, and fostered cooperation."
Pointing out that their individual operations were small, Chang says that local makers then banded together to create a division-of-labor system based on specialization. Some steps such as electroplating and lacquering were outsourced to specialized factories.
Sixty-five-year-old Huang Chung-hsiung, proprietor of the Huangwei Instrument Co., is another witness and survivor of the rise and fall of the Houli saxophone industry, having been in the business for 48 years.
"The number of saxophone makers in Houli has halved in the last few years, compared to the 1970s heyday," he says. "The main problem is that the operational scale of our factories is too small, while Chinese makers have posed an increasing threat to us because of their low-price competition."
Nevertheless, Huang says that through the division of labor, which reduced costs and increased efficiency, some have managed to stay alive.
"We are expert makers of saxophones, given that we've accumulated several decades of experience. Plus, we are hardworking and with great resilience," he says with confidence. "Our business can take off again if only we can receive financial and marketing assistance from outside to expand our productivity and sales channels."
In fact, help from both the government and research institutes has been given since 2004 when the Industrial Development Bureau under the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) initiated special projects to promote the innovation and transformation of local industries for a term of two to three years.
Houli's saxophone manufacturing was among those eligible industries chosen for government guidance and aid. "Our evaluations showed that, despite its small size, the domestic saxophone industry was pretty clustered in Houli and with a distinct local identity," says Kuo Sheng-hsi, section chief of the MOEA's Central Region office. "Moreover, it had advantages like fine craftsmanship and flexibility in dealing with customer needs, as well as the formation of a well-rounded supply chain and a satellite factory system in neighboring areas."
In the light of its development and good industrial foundation, Kuo's office decided to give Houli's saxophone industry a boost in the areas of design, materials development, standardization of production procedures and quality control, and marketing. It then commissioned the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) to implement this project.
Houli saxophone makers work together in research and development, production and marketing to gain a larger market share. (Courtesy of Industrial Technology Research Institute)
Defining Standards
Tsai Chang-wen, a researcher at ITRI and the executor of the saxophone project, says Houli saxophone makers had long made their products based on oral teaching from master craftsmen and had no objective means to gauge their product quality. Also, their OEM business formula limited their growth and caused unstable sales and slim profits.
To address these problems, first of all, ITRI bought saxophones from famous brands such as Henri Selmer of France and Yamaha of Japan and conducted analyses of their materials and timbre. The aim was to develop comparable materials locally and to create yardsticks for quality assurance.
Other important tasks that ITRI pushed through were the birth of an industrial organization, creation of a common brand name, "Saxhome," for saxophones made in Taiwan and the organizing of various publicity campaigns, including instrument exhibitions, musical festivals and a Web site detailing Houli's saxophone manufacturing development, with Chinese, English, French and Japanese versions.
"Houli sax makers must make a concerted effort in research and development, production and marketing to create a bigger market pie," Tsai says. "On top of this they need to build their own brands to thrive in the international market."
Huang Chung-hsiung was elected as the chairman of the Houli Saxophone Manufacturing Association in 2005. "It was the first time in years that local makers sat down together to discuss problems and figure out solutions," Huang recalls of their first meeting. "I got quite emotional when I saw that, and at the same time felt greater confidence in our future development."
Huang says a musical instrument's quality is determined by its pitch accuracy, sound volume and timbre. In the past, the local manufacturers judged such things largely by rule of thumb, based on their individual experience. ITRI has helped a lot by developing a computerized timbre and pitch analyzer as well as a database through its cooperation with several musicians and domestic universities. These systems enable saxophone makers to verify their performance of their products scientifically and know what needs improvement.
Chang Wan-fu of Wanlifu Instrument says that, for average customers, the first thing they consider when buying a saxophone is the look; it needs to be flawless. He is grateful to ITRI for introducing new electroplating technology and nano-coating which has improved the exterior finish of their products.
Apart from expanding their factory's size and workforce, Chang and his wife Lin Mei-yun also strive to promote their own brand name, SaxPlayHouse, through participation in instrument exhibitions and competitions, and the setting up of a sales store.
Better Prospects
Their efforts have gradually paid off in that, this year, their monthly sales have more than doubled compared with a year ago and their brand, SaxPlayHouse, is among the 20 winners of the 2007 Taiwan Superior Brands award, organized by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council. And a Taiwanese entrepreneur has expressed an interest in establishing specialized saxophone chains in China in 2008 to sell their products.
The Chang sisters' sax quartet performs in a domestic TV variety show. (Courtesy of Chang Lien-cheng Saxophone Museum)
"We have never been as confident and ambitious as we are now. Besides producing high-quality, high-end products, there are many more things that I'd like to do, like working with the tourism sector and setting up a large showroom and online shops to market our products," Lin says.
On the other hand, she hopes the government can provide the industry with low-interest loans to facilitate expansion of capacity and larger-scale marketing schemes which, she thinks, would enable them to grow faster.
Similarly, 44-year-old Wang Ching-sung, the boss of I Shin Instrument, believes that Taiwanese saxophone makers can find a niche in producing high-end and more sophisticated products.
"Some manufacturing steps such as soldering and final assembly still have to be done by hand, while customers are increasingly critical about overall product quality. The know-how we've accumulated over time enables us to excel in details," Wang says. "Plus, we are flexible in tackling customer needs in that we can develop a new model and hand in a sample in 10 days."
Wang is glad to see his formerly quiet town coming alive again through the increasing presence of tourists. "Thanks to ITRI's publicity campaigns and the TV commercial, many people now know if they want to get a good saxophone, Houli is the place to come to," he says with delight.
Indeed, the Chang Lien-cheng Saxophone Museum, for instance, has become one of the principal tourist destinations in the area. It showcases Chang's drawings of saxophone parts and the saxophone made by him, and the different steps of saxophone making.
"When my grandpa decided to make saxophones, people thought he was crazy and would never succeed," says Chang Tsung-yao, Chang Lien-cheng's eldest grandson. "Still, he went after his goal and enabled Houli to secure a place in the global saxophone trade. We set up the museum to commemorate his achievements."
Looking After a Legacy
Chang Tsung-yao and his wife Wang Tsai-jui continue to run the family saxophone business and seek to promote their own brand name, Lien Cheng. They plan to relocate the museum to a larger site that can accommodate a performance hall.
"Now that we have better techniques and products, the task ahead is to create our own brands and launch aggressive marketing," Wang says. "Our ideal is to build a place where visitors can appreciate sophisticated musical instruments and, as well, listen to the music because, after all, it's the music that endows the instruments with life."
One way to promote Houli's saxophones, Wang says, is to train musicians who later can become spokesmen for the products. She has been paving the way for this by cultivating the musical accomplishments of her four daughters--the eldest one is currently majoring in music at the university, two are in high school and one attends elementary school.
Together they have formed a sax quartet and are invited to perform in music festivals in Taiwan and overseas. Their reputation has spread after they were featured in the 2003 TV commercial.
The Chang family has come a long way from the days 60 years ago when Chang Lien-cheng taught himself the art of saxophone-making, to the Chang sisters' sax quartet.
And it is hoped that continuing collaboration between the government, academia and industry can produce new, ever brighter and bolder chapters in the story of Houli's musical miracle.
) then plot a solution.
