When I first started my website Bassic Sax in December 2000, I did so in part at the urging of Paul Coats, who is one of the men I bought my bass saxophone from. I had met Paul through SOTW (the largest saxophone discussion forum on the Internet BTW) and was the person who taught me more about bass saxophones in one day, than I ever thought possible. (There is a really funny story here that I will get around to writing one of these days. It involves how I broke almost every rule of personal safety when buying my bass sax. It really is a classic tale of what not to do, but how it how it turned out OK, as I knew it would.)
So Bassic Sax was really started as a reference tool for would-be bass sax players to get some information on the whats, the wheres, the hows, the whos, etc., and to get them plugged into to the virtual bass saxophone community that was developing at the time. Roughly at the same time, Steve Weinert started the Bass Saxophone Co-Operative, and had Paul Coats as a Moderator.
The Bass Sax Co-Op started out as a project to gauge the interest for new horn cases among vintage bass sax players. Steve had made contact with a company that made OEM cases for various musical instrument companies, and they agreed to make bass saxophone cases, if there was enough demand. The thing you have to remember here is that in 2000, bass saxophones weren’t yet enjoying the “popularity” that they’re enjoying today…thanks in large part to the Internet, but that’s a topic for another day…So both Steve’s Bass Saxophone Co-Operative and Bassic Sax were at the leading edge of what would become a fairly large wave.
As more bass saxophone information became available, as my personal collection of vintage saxophones grew, as I got to know more people through SOTW, and as the Internet started to evolve, my Bassic Sax site started to evolve as well. It no longer focused only on bass saxophone information; because more of it was now available on line. Bassic Sax began focusing on other areas of interest to sax players, ones that were not being covered by existing web resources. One of those areas of interest was the focus on vintage saxophones that were being asked about on SOTW, that I owned, but no one else seemed to know much about. These saxophones were rather obscure, and even Pete, who at the time owned the Vintage Saxophone Gallery, was at times stumped by some of the names that were being thrown about like: Pierret, La Monte, & Hüttl.
So through various site evolutions, my Bassic Sax website has evolved to include specialized pages on Pierret, Hüttl, and La Monte. The Italian La Monte puzzle was solved a couple of years ago, and that was exciting when that happened. The Hüttl mystery was just solved a few weeks ago, and that was über exciting! The Pierret mystery was the first to be solved, but as more information has come to light, my website is a bit out of date again. That is the next area of Bassic Sax that I am going to tackle an update for.
One thing I have learned over the last 7+ years of having a website: If your website is to be relevant, respected, and visited on a regular basis, it needs to be interesting, accurate, not-stagnant, and constantly evolving. It’s a lot of work! I didn’t know this when I registered my www.bassic-sax.info domain for the first time, but I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve met some very nice people through my site, from all over the world. And the best part of all: they share my love of vintage saxophones. Now that is über kewl 😎
