It was just over a year ago when I announced on this blog that I was undertaking a major new portion on my website: a section dedicated to the Vogtländische Musikinstrumentenfabrik GmbH Markneukirchen (VMI). VMI is what the VEB that manufactured the B&S, AKA blue label, and Weltklang saxophones morphed into after Germany’s reunification.
Just over a week ago I published the last of the Vogtländische Musikinstrumentenfabrik GmbH Markneukirchen (VMI) pro horn pages. Therefore the new B&S section contains the following model-specific pages:
What does this all mean? This means that if you’re looking for information on Guardala, Cordera, Medusa, or Series 2001 saxophones, you now have a place to start.
Sidebar: Just how do I come up with my content?
In this day of misinformation, fake news masquerading as real news, and personal opinion passing as something unbiased, I think it’s worth mentioning how I come up with the information/content for my website.
All of my pages are heavily referenced and illustrated. No, I didn’t just pull this stuff out of my you know what. 😉 I’ve researched everything that I write about, and research takes time. Furthermore, research isn’t someone else’s uninformed opinion either.
But Vogtländische Musikinstrumentenfabrik GmbH Markneukirchen (VMI) made other pro horns too, didn’t they?
Now if you’re a B&S fan, you’re likely asking: But what about the Chicago Jazz Series that they made? Those were certainly pro horns. Or how about the Allora or Accent? They were pro horns.
Yes, those particular stencils were indeed pro horns, while others—like this Richard Keilwerth alto, or the Musica sopranos that seemingly pop up all the time on eBay—were not.
However, with regards to B&S’s own Series of pro horns, there were only four (with a whole host of sub-models to add further variety).
The question that everyone always asks: Why did B&S stop saxophone production?
In a 2005 interview with the German saxophone website Saxwelt, Frank König, Geschäftsführer (CEO) of Ja Musik GmbH—the parent company of B&S—explained that the production of the professional models Allora, Chicago Jazz, Accent, and B&S Medusa would continue until the end of 2005. After that, only what dealers had on hand would be available for purchase. However, the company would be able to produce semi-professional and professional horns again, once the demand for these horns increased.
Of course we know that never happened again. As it would turn out, 2005 would be the last year that B&S made saxophones. It was only 5 or 6 years later that B&S sold its tooling to the Verne Q. Powell Flutes saxophone division, for the production of its Silver Eagle.1
The real question however, is why did B&S experience such a decline in demand for its saxophones?
Lots of people, myself included, have theorized that poor marketing of some of their models through shops like WWBW, made them seem as if they were budget horns, rather than the high-end, pro horns that they were. However, theories are not facts. For facts we are limited to the official word from a Musik GmbH’s CEO Frank König.
According to König, there were a number of factors that together led up to the drastic reduction of saxophone production—which ultimately saw the company cease all production of semi-pro and pro horns, and never start manufacturing them again. He mentioned the following in the same 2005 Saxwelt interview noted above:
- The development of new models, led to previous Series (such as the Medusa) being discontinued.
- The flooding of the market by cheap saxophones. In Markneukirchen it is not possible to manufacturer a saxophone for €300. In Germany it is not even possible to obtain the materials for that amount. Added to that are the labour costs, which are multiple times higher than they are in some Asian countries.
Sound familiar? It should. It’s the same swan song that ultimately killed much of Europe’s saxophone production, and is the reason even Selmer Paris is now producing a saxophone made of outsourced parts.
People want to buy the cheapest stuff they can find, and in so doing, are literally killing off the companies that have been around for generations. Specially trained craftsmen are finding themselves out of work; their jobs shipped off-shore and automated.
Sound familiar? Isn’t this the exactly same song the Americans are singing about their manufacturing industry? Food for thought. Just think about that the next time you want to buy the “cheapest” anything.
What’s upcoming in the Vogtländische Musikinstrumentenfabrik GmbH Markneukirchen (VMI) section
There is really not much left to do to finish the modern B&S section. There is very little left to write, since there is almost no information available about B&S’s intermediate or student lines. I will concentrate my efforts on gathering some images of some of the models that I have so far not been able to find.
The other piece left to work on are the stencil horns of B&S—and there were a lot of them. I have been slowly gathering information on the various stencils, so I hope to have at least a line or two on most of the stencil names to give them some context.
When everything is completed, these pages will be among the most comprehensive information available about B&S saxophones.
As noted above, I publish very little on my site that is not referenced well, which is why all this is taking much longer than if I just wrote a bunch of stuff without backing it up. 
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1 From the Company Overview section of the Silver Eagle Sax Facebook page.
