Mal-2 and I have been doing a back and forth about the tenor sax being played by the street busker in Sydney, Australia in my post from a couple of days ago. Mal-2 was wondering if the sax was a Dolnet M70. That got me thinking about this photo I came across a few months ago by mckros.
Ukrainian Military Man With Sax
Photography by mckros. Source: Flickr
I thought this sax was interesting. We don’t have a lot of info on Soviet era saxophones, and unless this is one of the old B&S or Weltklang horns (which I suppose it might be), I wonder if it wouldn’t be a Russian sax. Anyone know the pedigree of this tenor sax?
…this is just my blog. My “real” website is www.bassic-sax.info. If you’re looking for sax info, you should check it out too.There’s lots there!
I just had a look at the larger version on flickr, and I can see the B&S logo on the bell. The left hand pinky keys also match my B&S exactly (pre-unification – blue label). That would be what I’d say this one is.
You’re right! It is a Blue Label B&S horn. Mystery solved. Thank you.
BTW, was that yours on eBay a couple of weeks ago? It’s a very pretty horn. Like the one that the dealer in the Seattle region sold a short while ago, yours too has all the orignal pieces, and then some. I loved the extra pad set that came with it. I think there were some other things included as well, I just can’t remember them off the top of my head.
Yeah, perhaps it’s about as exotic as a Vespro or other Asian horn. (Although it doesn’t have double arms on the low C key, so the Goodson lineage is kinda’ ruled out.) I was hoping for something more interesting than Asian though. Perhaps I’m just a wishful dreamer. 😕
It’s definitely a looker, but only the guy holding it could tell us if it’s a cooker. 🙂
I also note the way the lyre holder is integrated into the neck tenon clamp, which is the way the current crop of Chinese horns seem to be doing it. They’re not alone in this by any means, it’s just another data point suggesting this is a relatively recent horn.
I prefer the lyre holder being of this style — there’s no post to worry about being bumped, twisted, or torn off, and it has a minimal profile. The only bad part is that it might put the music up in a player’s face to a degree that they can’t see where they’re marching, but that’s what lyre bending is for. 🙂
In my mind it looked too new to be a Weltklang, so I was thinking B&S. I’m not very familiar with the models before the Medusa, and the lyre blocks one from seeing anything that might be on the neck (logo wise I mean) so it’s hard to tell from that.
I would suppose that Russia, or some of the other countries of the former USSR, would have smaller cottage industry-type shops, that might be producing saxophones on a small scale.
The sax definitely has that post Mark VI look to it. Maybe one of the guys from SOTW would know. There’s a fellow from the Ukraine on the board. I should send him a PM. Although I remember him as a vintage horn enthusiast, perhaps he will know what the military might have access to in his country.
That’s a modern horn, judging by the condition and the feature set (high F#, tilting spatula, LH pinky cluster axles where they should be). I don’t know how many of these appeared on Soviet Bloc instruments, but my guess would be that this horn is too recent to be of Eastern European origin (unless it’s an Amati).