Very true. I had never played soprano, I was in an Atlantic City Casino club watching a friend of mine perform, when he reached over while playing tenor and handed me his soprano.. Yikes!!1 the first couple notes, eeekkkk! I was able to work something out but could not get the low end at all. I'm sure with a little time it would have come, but there was not time to practice. definitely a different embouchure

 

Yes it helps if you come from playing clarinet.

I started on clarinet and I use a vintage levelair metal mouthpiece on tenor which has a small beak much like many soprano metal mouthpieces.

Makes it easy to go back and forth during sets.

B

 

Because I started on clarinet - a long, long time ago - I think it made it easier to find a better embouchure. I just thought in terms of my old clarinet embouchure -- firm and tight and close. I like it like that.

 

Sometimes being a clarinet player isn't so bad after all.

 

I wouldnt go that far

 

Have'nt you heard Clarinet is the "new thing! Saxophones are now passe'. B

 

My cheap Chinese soprano

Well MartinMM I think you may have bought the same soprano I have. Mine is badged with a very small Bentley logo, otherwise gloss black, gold keywork and two necks, oh and leather case. A Chinese model, however I only paid £67 (roughly $90?) for it. Got it at an ebb on Ebay and the company was tailing off. I have played clarinet for many years and then took up tenor followed by alto sax. No problems there as they are in my opinion easier to play than clarinets (at a basic level). The soprano, I reasoned would not be too difficult as my clarinet history would be of use. It was and is, although I totally concur with the tonal difficulties. To me it feels like a slippery form of clarinet. I changed to a chinese metal mouthpiece asap and am looking for a reasonably priced decent piece still. It is certainly the most difficult of all the instruments for me and I think those without clarinet backgrounds may find it even more so. The horn looks really nice though. I think you will ultimately be happy with it. Incidentally my Chinese copper alto needed some post "new" tlc and having oiled and re-aligned and re-stuck various corks it is playing really nicely. There is mileage in these horns and prices are starting to rise so the "good" period may be over. In fact generally prices seem to be going up rather than down on all woodwind. Weird isnt it! Good luck all sop blowers!!

 

My experience with sopranos is that people who play any kind of woodwind are at a disadvantage. I brought a small curved (chinese) soprano to band practice once, and the only people who could get any acceptable sound from it were the trumpet players!

In my opinion the saxophone players and the clarinet players were equally bad - a soprano very different from an alto or a clarinet.

By the way, that soprano also was almost a half tone low, I had to take it back to the store. They sanded down the cork until the mouthpiece could be pushed far enough in to be in tune in the lower octave. Of course, such a radical adjustment does not help at the end of the range, they will be somewhat out of tune. You will have to compromise....

I ended up by trading it in for a Yanagisawa 901, which was in tune from day one - over the whole range!

 

I have a Yanagisawa S6 that I've played since the early 1980's and it has great intonation.

I have a Selman curved soprano that has rotten intonation.

Sometimes it is the horn.

 

Can you really compare Selman to Yanagisawa? I owned an S-6 and even though ergos were not correct for my playing the tone was incredible.

Played a Selman tenor for about two days and sold it as junk.

B

 

I will agree that some horns are more forgiving with difference MPC+Reed setups that others. I have one soprano that will play with almost any MPC+Reed, and play in tune. The other horn will only work right with certain setups. Past that, I have been able to nail down plenty intonation problems to adjustment issues, even on cheap horns. All it takes is a leak, a weak spring or a regulation issue, and you have an intonation problem. I rarely get horns new or old that did not need something done to them.

As far as embouchure, it is very hard to play a soprano and fighting that urge to bite. Especially in the higher register. Adjust the airstream, not the chops. If you cannot play the whole range of the instrument with a constant and steady embouchure pressure, then it is time to change the setup!

My .02USD

Phineas

 

+1 for Bobby C. I have sops that have great intonation and ones that are absolute crap. Most King Saxellos I have tried fit in the latter category - collectible but almost unplayable. I also have vintage sops that are the equal of modern horns intonation wise, eg Buescher straight and Tipbells and later model Buescher curved sops (don't have an early version so can't comment). Possibly my most accurate intonation horns are Yani SC-991 and S-991. Some of the cheap Chinese horns I have tried are virtually unplayable (when taking into account the entire range) because the intonation is so bad on specific notes. I also have some Taiwanese horns ( a Jupiter 847 and a P. Mauriat saxello) with near perfect intonation.

However, the horns that really bother me are those with almost every note just right except one (such as middle C# or middle D) or a few (eg the palm keys are 40 cents sharp). I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get them playable - see MusicMedic.com for some great suggestions on adjustment. For instance, I have an SML sop that, thus far, I cannot get several notes even close to acceptable - but I haven't given up!

 

It's not an either/or thing.... It's a combo of the player AND the sax. A good sax player might be able to make a crap sax sound OK, but I guarantee if I took a Five-pound Persuader to his Selmer, even Sandborn's sax would sound like you-know-what... :twisted:

Some saxes are just CRAP, and it's not worth the player's effort to get it to sound good. I would about bet that if you went and picked up a YSS-875 or a Yani 991, it would feel better, play better, and make you sound better without as much effort.

Can I get an Amen?

 

I'm not in favour of people thinking a soprano sax should be played with a clarinet embouchure as for one important thing, it's a saxophone and not a clarinet and they're both entirely different beasts.

Push the mouthpiece on as far as it can go so it's showing very little cork (around 3-4mm showing http://www.howarth.uk.com/pic.aspx?pic=./PICTURES/Insts/YSS675.jpg&pid=35200 - have the cork sanded down if it won't go on far enough), and then play with a sax embouchure - that's blowing down to pitch rather than a clarinet embouchure which is blowing up to pitch.

 

My experience so far is that the soprano embouchure is not like a clarinet or an alto or tenor sax - it's its own thing and I'm working on developing it. I bought 3 inexpensive mouthpieces to experiment with - Rico Royal graftonite B7, Yamaha 6C, and Bari Esprit. Each one has its own position for best tuning - the Bari is furthest out, the other 2 I have to push further in. The Bari is also the most closed, which may have something to do with it. Also, I have better intonation with the Bari, probably again because it's most closed. I've been playing with a tuner and the Rico and Yamaha send the needle all over - I really have to focus and control to keep the needle in the green zone. With the Bari it's easier. But the more I play, the happier I am with the horn. Some of the limitations are in the mouthpiece (and reed), but most of them are in me and my embouchure.

 

I bought a Borgani soprano cheap off of Ebay that the seller was honest enough to say that it had intonation problems. And it did, with the mouthpiece that came with it. I couldn't believe how bad it was. Turns out that a big chamber mp did the trick. I don't know if the first mp was original, but I found out that the mp can give a horn a bad (undeserved) reputation.

Clarinet is back in vogue? They were never out, people just stopped playing them.

Mark

 

I too bought a cheapo Chinese sop, figuring the £60 was worth a shot (as I could not afford £800!!). It came sans mouthpiece, so i tried it with a variety, settling on a Yamaha costing 1 1/2 times as much as the sax. The mouthpiece has to be pushed to within a 1/4" of its life to play in pitch. A word of caution: Be very careful when adjusting the mouthpiece; I managed to snap off one of the crooks at the weld (in the sax!) Took a while to extricate. Fortunately i like the other crook better anyway! It now plays reasonably well, and I play regularly in a quartet and big band.
As with most sops the intonation is what i call "variable tuning"...little better than a slide whistle. Requires a good ear and lots of embouchure control. Unfortunately, with a
2 1/2 Vandoren reed, the top register seems to need a fair amount of bite (which I hate) but with a 3 Vandoren, it responds pretty well. I have not yet taken it to a good servicer for tweaking, and that is clearly the next step as we get closer to recording and gigging. But generally well worth the small amount paid, if you are an experienced and confident player.

 

I'm seeing more and more folks buy these ultra-cheap horns and then blame themselves or their other equipment when things go south. Boggles the mind, really.

 

It's possible that some of these folks know enough about horns and playing them to discern which issues are with the horn and which are elsewhere.

 

Just as it's possible that many of us realize the pitfalls in buying a new horn for two hundred bucks and expecting it to do anything other than fail to live up to unrealisitic expectations.

Has this site gone completely mad...

 

See the "Cheap Chinese sax" thread started by CashSax for a knowledgeable discussion by pro players. http://forum.saxontheweb.net/showthread.php?t=101119

 

Friend of mine just bought a Barrington Soprano. The ergos and sound are better than that of my Winston, yet he paid 1/2 as much! Hearing him play that, you wouldn't know it was a cheap Chinese knockoff!

 

I bought a cheap Chinese soprano roughly 7 years ago. In fact, I still gig with it. No, it is not put together as well as a Big 4 horn, or even a modern Taiwanese horn. It's a fairly tough blow in the upper range, but it is manageable. The tone is a little brighter than I would like, but nobody has ever complained. Intonation is decent. Not perfect, but manageable throughout the range. In 7 years time, I only had to get 1 pad replaced and I had the rest of the horn setup as well. That was roughly 4 years ago, and the horn has stayed in pretty good adjustment since then. Yes, I will eventually upgrade. But I have to say that this horn has served me very well...considering the $150 price tag.

 

-double post, slow board-

 

$150 7 years ago! Was it used? My silver plated Winston was $800 14 years ago. The craftsmanship and intonation of comparably prices sopranos NOW are light years ahead of mine . I'm still on original pads and corks, and when this one is due for rebuild, it goes on e-bay, and I'll be buying another import. In the mean time I have a nice curved Conn stencil being rebuilt .

 

My horn was one of those Ebay deals complete with white gloves. I bought the horn purely out of curiousity and I wasn't expecting much. The stock mouthpiece was utter garbage, but the horn played very well with my friend's STM. So I ended up picking up the same mouthpiece. The horn certainly isn't a Yamaha, or a Buescher True Tone, but it gets me by.

 

In reality, nobody here is right! We're all wrong! Ya'know why? Because NONE of us know exactly how that horn plays, or how the OP plays. It's conjecture, based on written words. Grumps might be right. The OP might be right. Has he played a quality soprano to compare it to? I know Grumps has. I know I have (I've played Yamahas, Yanis, and Selmers, just can't afford any of them!). He might be trying to make himself feel better (it's human nature). Who knows.

 

Yeah, can't wait till my Beufort American gets finished being rebuilt! It should be way better than my Winston!

I bought a cheap $100 Schill Soprano on e-bay last year. We needed another Soprano for "Chicago" so I thought "what the hell?" . It was pretty. White Nickle plate w/gold plate keys. Came w/white gloves . The action was nice. I had to do a minor setup when it arrived, but it was a toss up: Keep the Schill, or the Winston? Kept the Winston because the Winston still had better build quality overall. Sold the Schill to the woman that was playing it in the pit. I swallowed shipping ($25) and sold it to her for the $100 I paid for it . Her main axe is clarinet.

We had 3 Chinese Sopranos in that pit: Schill (white nickle w/gold plate keys), Cecilio (white nickle plate), and EM Winston (Silver Plate). The Schill I bought and sold, the Cecilio belongs to the college (bought from a former student), and my Winston. The Cecilio had the worst feeling action, and the worst sound quality between the 3! Amazing it didn't sound like we were skinning cats when all 3 played at once, but I attribute that to the 3rd Soprano (Cecilio player) not playing loud enough to be heard (Tenor player) . The 2nd Soprano (Schill) and I both already had the chops for it .

 

While I don't want to dive into an animated discussion of cheap horns, the fact is that a really good player can make almost any instrument sound great (and I am not referring to my own more modest skills). One of the most amusing things I have seen recently is a local pro playing an incredible piece with a dirt cheap clarinet while simultaneously dismantling it piece by piece. It was a stunning display of skill.

So I have a problem with recommending cheap horns to beginners or even intermediate players as they may well attribute any shortcomings in playing results to their own abilities. I encourage starting players to buy a high quality instrument as it can only help their desire and ultimately the results.