[turf3]

Gold plated ….a bundy was made by keilwerh not buesceher

Bundy saxes have been made by Buescher, Keilwerth, Conn and probably several others through the years. The most common Bundy saxophones owned by middle schoolers in the 1960s and 70s were Buescher designs, made by them after the Selmer buyout.

 

[turf3]

OP, what you've got there is a gold plated True Tone that's had pretty heavy wear so the silver undercoat is showing through (in a lot of places it looks like the gold's worn off altogether). So:

A brass horn
Possibly flashed with a light copper plate
Then a heavy silver plate
Then gold plating
Then 100 years of wear.

This is a very common finish for this kind of horn. If the pads and corks are in good shape and the horn's properly regulated it will play as well as any saxophone in existence - it's a top quality professional instrument of its time.

No bronze involved.

The "first~fourth" series designations for Bueschers are after-the-fact creations of collectors to easily identify the successive design changes that were applied to the horns. They are not designations ever used by Buescher.

 

[JL]

OP, what you've got there is a gold plated True Tone that's had pretty heavy wear so the silver undercoat is showing through (in a lot of places it looks like the gold's worn off altogether).

Yes. And the horn might respond well to some polishing. Certainly, the areas where the gold has worn away leaving the silver plate behind will polish up nicely. I don't know about where the tarnish has formed under the gold (or bled through?), but maybe it can be polished away.

This is a very common finish for this kind of horn. If the pads and corks are in good shape and the horn's properly regulated it will play as well as any saxophone in existence - it's a top quality professional instrument of its time.

Very true. The horn may need some work. Playing condition is the important thing.

 

[turf3]

And that alto was made in Elkhart, Ind.

See, stuff like this is how myths get created. Nowadays with Internet, the half-life of misinformation is actually shorter as people can chime in to say "What???!!?? That's ridiculous!!" but back in my young days, you just had the repair man at the music store and your teacher to listen to. They could tell you any damn fool thing and if they sounded convincing, off you'd go repeating it ad infinitum with little change of being contradicted by someone with access to accurate information. As witness the (still prevalent) characterization of certain horns as "large bore" or "small bore" when you can LOOK AT THE ACTUAL MEASUREMENTS and see that such is not the case. Or the mythical "parabolic saxophone bore" which by all accounts seems to have been one author's misinterpretation of what he saw, looking down the bore of a saxophone with the common "banana bend" forward.

 

[JayeLID]

Honestly, if the horn plays and doesn't need a repad or overhaul, I think it looks cool as all heck with the tarnish which gives it the bronze-y hue....
If it does need a repad then it's probably worth having a full cleaning of body and keys in which case you'd lose the patina and return it to gold colored....

 

[JL]

If it does need a repad then it's probably worth having a full cleaning of body and keys in which case you'd lose the patina and return it to gold colored....

Except where the gold plate has completely worn off, where it will return to silver colored. But I agree the patina is kind of cool looking. It would also look great polished up. And again, as I said, the main thing is playing condition.

 

[Russlan]

https://nationalsaxophonemuseum.com/buescher.html

I do not see how any Beuscher was produced in Germany.

The ancestors of Gus Buescher were produced in Germany. Buescher's saxophones - no.

 

[Ixthusdan]

The ancestors of Gus Buescher were produced in Germany. Buescher's saxophones - no.

LOL I thought we were discussing musical instruments, not people!

 

[lowkey1]

That looks to be a badly tarnished gold plated TT. Here is one I had before polishing.

 

[Zasterz]

Hey so how’s it pronounced? Is it boo like book boo-sher? Boo like booze? Or “bee-you” like Ferris Bee-you-ller?

 

[Dr G]

Hey so how’s it pronounced? Is it boo like book boo-sher? Boo like booze? Or “bee-you” like Ferris Bee-you-ller?

Bish-er (as shown in Buescher literature of the period).

 

[Zasterz]

Bish-er (as shown in Buescher literature of the period).

Oof I guess German is not my forte— I never guess pronunciations correctly!

 

[PigSquealer]

Oof I guess German is not my forte— I never guess pronunciations correctly!

Try auto type on your phone as Boosh….no go. As Bish-er it will spell correct

 

[John_Dikeman]

Bish-er (as shown in Buescher literature of the period).

I've wondered about this. Many immigrants when moving to the states adapted their names somehow. My family name, for instance, is Dikeman, but the original Dutch was Dijkman or actually at the time, I believe, the ij was written as a y with two dots. That's a spelling change to match the sound based on the local alphabet, however I believe a lot of family's with foreign names kept their spelling and adapted their pronunciation. Someone can help me, but I'm pretty sure in German you would not pronounce Buescher as Bish-er, the way the company apparently did. I'm guessing that was their personal compromise for Americans that just couldn't say it correctly.
I've also been amused how often German people pronounce Keilwerth in an American way when I speak to them, something like the English Kyle Worth. As opposed to the French that pronounce every name as if it were French so I've had numerous conversations with people telling me about an artist and being shocked I don't know who it is, slowly to realise they are talking about someone super famous, just with their accident i couldn't decipher it.

ahem... that was a tangent. sorry?

 

[turf3]

I've wondered about this. Many immigrants when moving to the states adapted their names somehow. My family name, for instance, is Dikeman, but the original Dutch was Dijkman or actually at the time, I believe, the ij was written as a y with two dots. That's a spelling change to match the sound based on the local alphabet, however I believe a lot of family's with foreign names kept their spelling and adapted their pronunciation. Someone can help me, but I'm pretty sure in German you would not pronounce Buescher as Bish-er, the way the company apparently did. I'm guessing that was their personal compromise for Americans that just couldn't say it correctly.
I've also been amused how often German people pronounce Keilwerth in an American way when I speak to them, something like the English Kyle Worth. As opposed to the French that pronounce every name as if it were French so I've had numerous conversations with people telling me about an artist and being shocked I don't know who it is, slowly to realise they are talking about someone super famous, just with their accident i couldn't decipher it.

ahem... that was a tangent. sorry?

Well, there are a lot of vowel sounds (and a few consonants) in other languages that don't have an exact analogy in English, so generally the bearer of a name with such sounds ends up adapting the spelling to something that enables native English speakers to get kind of close-ish.

Or there's the British, who resolutely refuse to use pronunciations of the "foreign" language in question, thus pronunciations like "Jagg-you-err" and "Nick-a-ragg-you-ah". New Englanders tend to take a lot of their attitude from the British, thus pronunciations like "tor-till-ee-yah" for the Mexican flatbread or "pee-cann" for the tasty nut. Of course Texans, despite our Spanish-Mexican heritage, aren't exempt with names like Mexia (mu-hey-ya) or Refugio (Ref-eer-eeyoh) or Palacios (Pa-lash-us). Heck, something like a third of US states are named with Indian names, pretty much 100% of which are heavily modified from the actual Indian word. "Woodchuck" the common American animal, was really "woochak", which leads to the riddle:

"How much woo could a woochak chack, if a woochak could chack woo?"

And how come chlorine, fluorine, are pronounced een but iodine is eyen?

 

[lostcircuits]

I've wondered about this. Many immigrants when moving to the states adapted their names somehow. My family name, for instance, is Dikeman, but the original Dutch was Dijkman or actually at the time, I believe, the ij was written as a y with two dots. That's a spelling change to match the sound based on the local alphabet, however I believe a lot of family's with foreign names kept their spelling and adapted their pronunciation. Someone can help me, but I'm pretty sure in German you would not pronounce Buescher as Bish-er, the way the company apparently did. I'm guessing that was their personal compromise for Americans that just couldn't say it correctly.
I've also been amused how often German people pronounce Keilwerth in an American way when I speak to them, something like the English Kyle Worth. As opposed to the French that pronounce every name as if it were French so I've had numerous conversations with people telling me about an artist and being shocked I don't know who it is, slowly to realise they are talking about someone super famous, just with their accident i couldn't decipher it.

ahem... that was a tangent. sorry?

It was common practice to change umlauts according to the mood of the day of the immigration officer. For example ü is the shortened form of ue derived from the gothic longhand where e was written as ii and then placed on top of a o or u to designate the umlaut. But those characters don't exist and so the closest thing to ü (in the mind of the officer) was often o rather than "spelling it out" to ue.

And of course, the pronunciation became kind of random. Büscher is a common name in Germany and they were lucky to maintain the correct spelling of the name but even the Bisher pronunciation is just the closest approximation of Büscher for the American ear and I don't think there are any recordings of how Gus really pronounced it himself.

A random other example of name butchery is a friend of mine, his last name is Herrle but that's only because his father gave his name to the immigration officer on Ellis island as Herr Leventhal (Mr. Leventhal) and the officer was ***? . Ron Coelho's landlord's name was Oberrexxxxx but the German ancesters were Überrexxxx

And so on. But this is not unique to the US, similar stuff happens in European countries as well, just not as pervasive.

 

[JL]

That looks to be a badly tarnished gold plated TT. Here is one I had before polishing.

Yes, but just for accuracy, it's the silver plate that is tarnishing, both where the gold has worn off and also to some extent, under the gold (I think). Gold doesn't tarnish.*

*Edit: Actually, it appears that under certain conditions it can tarnish. See my post #63 below.

 

[jazzbob]

If I ever get back down to Seattle, I think Carlo Cennamo of Cennamo Woodwinds could give a good opinion about my saxophone. www.cennamowoodwinds.com During 2014 Carlo did a restoration of a 1930 gold-plate Buescher alto for me, with black "Joey" pads that was an amazing piece of work.

This 1926 saxophone sure looks cool, to me; so I don't want to get too radical messing with success. The instrument's key-body is what seems questionable; as if the factory had left that somehow unfinished, that's really different from the bell and bow parts of the saxophone. Once the octave mechanism where that links to the neck mechanism is unbent, the horn's playability will be able to be determined. I think I'm sold on this era Buescher altos, and this one in particular.

My next project is to try to create some squares of soundboard, like two-foot by two-foot, or sixteen inches; and cover the walls of a room with these so I can practice without annoying anyone, and if I move just take them with me. There is a new sort of clear tape advertised on television which could easily allow this; while soundboard cost only $8 for a 4' x 8' sheet about twenty years ago, which still ought to be affordable?

I sent away for an inexpensive tripod which will mount a smartphone, so as soon as that's here I'll try to take some more pictures out of doors. Perhaps Alan Signs here who is going to do the necessary work on this horn to get that playable, may also have an opinion about the unusual looking instrument? www.bellinghamhornshop.com Unlike Carlo, Alan is not a saxophonist; who plays a large lower brass horn, in size between a baritone horn and a tuba.

 

[jazzbob]

Yes, but just for accuracy, it's the silver plate that is tarnishing, both where the gold has worn off and also to some extent, under the gold (I think). Gold doesn't tarnish.

I was able to make gold do something; which I'd also thought would not tarnish? The gold-plate 1930 Buescher alto Carlo Cennamo restored had been kept in a homemade case I'd built out of a pair of cedar fencing slat seconds for $2; which had sat for quit a few years, after the instrument had become unplayable in need of an overhaul. When given to Carlo the saxophone sure was awful looking; which if not tarnish must've been a reaction of the finish to the cedar, which had surrounded it for so long.

"World famous underground jazz legend" Bert Wilson even suggested I line the case I'd made with leather; which had been an awfully nice improvisation I'd initially meant to be a flower box, the saxophone fit as if made for that. A young woman got that sax she'd been quite pleased with, and I think the case had charmed her too; not least since I'd found a Scandinavian army surplus duffel bag with brass grommets for a drawstring, which fit my home made case so perfectly, you'd of thought manufactured for the thing.

I think I might've gone into a little business, making similar cedar slat cases for that era Buescher alto saxophones; though lately they've downsized cedar fencing slats which are also chemically impregnated and very ugly for that.

 

[PigSquealer]

This came in for a overhaul. SN 176xxx /1925. It’s gold plated. Pictures taken in different lighting.