A Quiz For All You Vintage Saxophiles Out There
A Quiz For All You Vintage Saxophiles Out There

A Quiz For All You Vintage Saxophiles Out There

Someone recently contacted me about a saxophone that he bought, which was rather unique. I have never quite seen anything like it before.

The new owner suggested that I post a photo of one of the more unusual sections of the horn on my blog, to see if any of you might be able to ID the horn from the photo alone. I thought it was a interesting idea.

A member of the Woodwind Forum recently did something similar when he bought an Olds saxophone. IIRC, I believe eventually Pete Hales might have figured out what it was.

So without further ado, here is Bob’s (not his real name) mystery sax:

Here are a couple of clues about this horn to get you started:

  • Serial #: 46XX
  • It is circa WWII

That’s it for hints folks.

So leave your educated or wild guesses as a comment below. If you have a photo you’d like to upload to backup your claim, even better.

If after a few days we are nowhere near an answer, I’ll see what I can do about getting another photo of another unusual section of the horn.

Oh, and if you’re the shy type, and don’t like to leave your comment in public, you can always email me privately.

9 Comments

  1. @Jim Chambers: That’s good Jim. I like the story. 😆 Too bad it’s not true. But what a great rumour that would be to start. 😈

    @Pete:

    Helen, did you get any more pics?

    Ask, and ye shall receive. Check out the post for today: http://bassic-sax.info/blog/?p=30456

    @Quinn The Eskimo: Congrats. How’d you do that? Country right down to the city. Now all you need is a Manufacturer. Model name would be good too. 😉

  2. Helen – this rings a bell, I’m sure that I saw that ‘up to palm G’ arrangement on an alto for sale in the Eurozone some time ago, think it also went down to low A – or maybe that was another one… I’ll rack the brain for a while, I’m sure I grabbed the picture !

    1. Hi there Alan. Long time no see. Glad to have you back for a visit!

      That’s funny. You were posting just as I posted mine. I didn’t see yours until later. Sorry about that.

      You’re right about the up to the “G” thingy, but no, it doesn’t go down to low A. It’s range is down to the regular low Bb.

      I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw one of these in Europe somewhere. That’s where these thing’s will most likely pop up.

      I’ll post the answer to this tomorrow.

  3. > A member of the Woodwind Forum recently did something similar when he bought an Olds saxophone. IIRC, I believe eventually Pete Hales might have figured out what it was.

    You’ve also got to note that the poster didn’t even include a picture! 😀

  4. jim chambers

    my friend Gordon had one like this, although his appeared to be covered with green wool.
    he said his father told him they made these in a secret factory in USA during WW2, to drop on the Germans, knowing that they were opposed to saxophones as instruments of degenerate music..
    the idea was that they would lower morale in Germany.
    apparently the later ones were made of bamboo because brass was quite scarce.

    that’s all I can remember,,hope it’s some help.

  5. Jason

    I want to say this is some kind of Buescher however those obscure palm keys have me doubting myself. Can’t wait to find out what it really is! The reason I say buescher is because of the G# key shape and texture

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