I appreciate your drive to gather your own opinions of these "sso's". I wonder how much scatter occurs within one model? Do you think you got the one best Glory out of a hundred? Not that I'm in the market, but if one showed up for $50 with a case on CL......

 

The case might be worth the $50. You could always make a lamp out of the horn if it's especially terrible.

 

Thanks for doing this...this will help buyers a lot.

 

I got an "el-cheapo" curved soprano to practice in my car during my job's pauses.
It does the job as it allows me to shred some scales and arpeggios every now and then, but the tone is nowhere near a real soprano (I know: the little beast is difficult to tame anyway).

With a good mouthpiece it's not that bad, actually, but, since it resides in my trunk, it got the Yamaha 4C (so I can slowly get rid of all those hard reeds I bought before my 8* Drake arrived to my door).

I think that those SSOs can be a nice deal, If someone is looking for exactly what they are and which limitations they have.
Unfortunately most of the buyers are parents who buy it for a son, dooming his career from the very start.

 

With a good mouthpiece it's not that bad, actually, but, since it resides in my trunk, it got the Yamaha 4C (so I can slowly get rid of all those hard reeds I bought before my 8* Drake arrived to my door).

You do know the leather and glue associated with "good maintenance" on a sax is subject to heat and temp changes and damage? And, 25k miles a year of vibration and such might also accelerate wear and aging. Just sayin'

 

I write this review as a guide and as a fulfillment of curiosity.

That's great. But it would help a lot if we would know what level you're at as a player. The tuning issues you seem to have with these horns may be the horns themselves but they also may be you.

 

Thanks for these review!

 

Nice review! I like how you gave each horn the same treatment and gave a real review despite how "wonderful" they were.

 

You are a brave man, thanks for doing this. I get tempted every once in a while to pick one up and I'm not even sure why...I think its just the price like how can this possibly be this cheap! I wish the market would just reject these junk instruments, we need to give kids every opportunity for success in music in my opinion. They will learn to compensate for bad intonation then struggle to get on a good horn. Especially when you can buy a decent used instrument for 300 bucks on eBay. If I had a repair shop I would refuse to work on these things, and tell them its not worth me to even open the case. I have a vintage Malerne on Ebay now overhauled for $300 bucks with no bites, just saying it plays in tune and has a big sound. A small amount of work finding a value instead of cheap.

 

Leo Fender said, "A quality instrument is easily repaired."
Beyond the issues that SaxyLou reports, one of the big questions with these cheap objects is are they repairable on any level? It's appropriate to learn on an inexpensive instrument, but even student horns should have a basic level of maintainability. I'll bet these horns are built in such a way that anything but the most basic adjustments are simply not possible. So, they're just fodder for the garbageman.

 

Leo Fender was not a musician.

Fender's idea -that shows a good amount of marketing genius- was to build a guitar that was cheap for the maker, easy to assemble and in which a bent neck (there was no truss rod, back then) didn't mean the end of the instrument or an expensive repair.
Fenders are modular guitar, so easy to build from scratch that I was able to build a Telecaster in my garage and make it play as good as any legit Fender. There's no doubt that Gibson guitars are (were?) of a higher level: better build quality, better finish, better everything. Unfortunately they were much more expensive.

Repairing a Fender guitar in 80% of cases means that you're able to keep a screwdriver in your hand and work with a little of precision.
Repairing a saxophone (every saxophone) often means that you are able to:

-replace a pad with 0,05mm tolerance with 1800's technology
-do some advanced metal work: dent removal, tube straightening...
-soft solder
-braze
-regulate a complex interlinked mechanism using only cork and some fantasy down the road
-operate a lathe

I would say that repairing any woodwind instrument it's not an easy task by any means!

But quality saxophones do exist.

Back to Chinese saxophones: they are made of brass as my Selmer, so dent removal shouldn't be an issue. They are built with higher tolerances and inferior pads and corks and springs and lacquer and... but they are only marginally more difficult than a quality saxophone to be set up. The problem is that nobody in his right mind would happily pay for a 400€ repad on a saxophone that's half the price new. Or invest the same amount of money they put in the instrument on a good regulation and setup during which tolerances are reduced. My tech would not refuse a job on a Chinese 200$ alto, but he would warn me beforehand that his job would cover the price of a new instrument of the same quality.
Add to that that most of this kind of saxophones are played by people that have little or no clue about what's a good saxophone...
Add to that that poor craftsmanship means a higher rate of "strange" failures (unsoldered posts, falling pads)...
And you have a recipe for failure. But you can setup them, with the right amount of time/money...

 

I'm sure those with larger repair shops than mine have a lot more horror stories than I do, but from my experience, many of these saxophones are not repairable. The metal is too soft, they don't hold adjustments, the springs don't stay in (the posts are too soft to support the springs). There is not enough adhesive on corks and pads. There is not enough solder on posts. There is no source for parts. Some of them have "pot" metal keywork which melts when heat is applied, etc. Keys are too soft and bend to easily. For the most part, we have stopped repairing these horns. It's not just saxophones, it's flutes, trumpets, trombones, etc.

Even some with recognizable brand names are not repairable. We had a Kohlert trumpet come in a few years ago. It was only three months old and the plating on the valves had already worn off. We called the distributor to get new valves and were told there are no parts available...you have to order a whole new trumpet.

Another big problem is the lack of parts available for many of the "boutique" saxophones on the market. A few years ago I picked up a used tenor which was one of the private brands you all have heard of. It was a decent quality tenor so I felt good selling it. The horn was only a year old and it was a nice player. A customer of ours purchased it and seriously damaged the neck shortly after the purchase. I called the owner of the brand to purchase a new neck for it and was told that necks are no longer available for that horn. This was a fairly expensive private label horn and it was only a year old. Already parts cannot be found for it and because so few were made, we will probably never be able to find a proper neck for it.

My advise is stick with well known brand names and good used and vintage horns. Finding parts for a vintage horn can be difficult, but still much easier than finding parts for some of the modern boutique horns.

 

Some of them have "pot" metal keywork which melts when heat is applied

If it wasn't for the fact that some young folks are going to learn on these kind of instruments, that would be hilarious.

 

So a modern boutigue brand must be made in Taiwan? If so It would be easy to get a neck for a Taiwan horn that would work. The only one I can think of would be the Theo Wanne Mantra that has a unique neck. So I bet that is the brand you speak of. Why not name the brand?

 

Excuse my ignorance, but what does the acronym "SSO" mean? Thanks!

 

Sax Shaped Objects

 

Thank you for the time and effort you put into this review.
I recently purchased a Mendini alto saxophone from amazon.com
I thought I was paying for the model designed like a Yamaha 62, but instead K&K Music sent me a model that was designed more like a Selmer Reference 54 (I got the silver finish to match with my soprano)
To be perfectly honest...I have no issue with the horn. It came in a nice zippered hard case (which can be annoying...I prefer latches myself). It came with some cheap reeds, a disgrace of a mouthpiece, something that they call a pad saver, a chromatic tuner (which I have yet to use) some cork grease, some white gloves and a polishing cloth...all the thing's the brother mentioned in the beginning of this thread.
The only real complaint I have about this horn is the cork...it's WAY too big for my ARB metal 6. I spent more than an hour using #0000 grade steel wool to sand the cork down enough so my mouthpiece would fit! Once I was able to fix the cork...everything was fine.
It has a very nice tone, very warm and expressive, it has incredible range from the subtones through the altissimo register.
The right hand palm keys are a little too far back for me to comfortably do a flutter and the left hand palm keys have sharp points that dig into my hand when I'm playing.
Other than that...the horn is wonderful!
No piece of junk here with my experience.
I use and ARB metal 6 with the stock ligature and Vandoren Traditional 2.5 reeds.
If I want Paul Desmond or Lennie Neihaus, I got it...
If I want Nelson Rangell or Dave Koz, I got it...
This is a wonderful alto saxophone
I really love my Mendini silver alto saxophone!