When you buy a lamp, do you want it come with accessories? Well if so, then you will absolutely love this little gem currently up for sale on eBay.
A dealer on eBay has obviously noted the outrage of certain vintage saxophone enthusiasts, when they see their favourite brand of pro horn turned into a lamp fixture. cgmusic2007 has attempted to use this outrage to his (her?) advantage when advertising this vintage, Martin-stencilled, Symphony alto saxophone lamp.
Source: eBay.com
This is what the seller writes about this lamp. (I tried to keep the formatting as close to original as possible with regards to bolding and relative size.) 🙂
Vintage Alto Saxophone LAMP (sacrilege!)
Conn or Martin stencil we believe
“Professional Model”
“Made in Elkhart”
“58043”
“LP”
includes neck with microtuner (original?)
Beveled tone holes, soldered
Wire key guards
Gold tone inside of bell
Hefty “keel” on bottom (see pic)
Firmly attached to heavy wooden base (but could be easily removed)
Very good condition with no dents. Keys, springs, etc. seem fine. Pads not good.
Neck with microtuner–turns freely. No dents. Ends are round. This neck may not be for this instrument, but finish appears the same and it was stored with it. Lamp was not taken apart to try the neck on it.
Lamp works fine if you want to use it that way. We didn’t know if the sax could be repaired and restored for use as a musical instrument. The only damage is a pencil sized hole in the bottom.
If restored, pad replacement goes without saying.
FINISH: Silver plate OR silver colored finish of some sort. It cleans with a silver cloth–but only to a degree. It has an overall nice patina to it, and looks really good from a distance, but on closer examination, the finish is pretty poor. See all pictures and you will see the damage. Looks really good if just glancing at the pictures. The finish is gone in many areas and/or looks very spotty.
Neat instrument! Makes a great display if wiring is removed. Or a great lamp with the right shade! Looks good, even with the finish damage!!!
If you have read this far, perhaps you know something about vintage saxes. We welcome your expert knowledge about this instrument! We welcome all questions and comments.
Thanks for looking!
This item was found when we sold our small town family owned music store.
Source: eBay.com
There’s only one problem of course: the neck isn’t original. Hell, the neck isn’t even a Martin. Martin didn’t make microtuner necks for their Handcraft saxophones. The neck is most likely from a Conn New Wonder.
The horn is a stencil of a Martin Handcraft phase 2. It has the bevelled tone holes of the phase 2, and is lacking the front F key. Interestingly enough, or perhaps coincidentally enough—I’m not up on Martin stencils enough to say for sure—even the serial number fits within the phase 2 manufacturing period. For more information and lots comparison photos of the Martin Handcraft, check out the Martin Story.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and take a wild stab at how this poor thing ended up as a lamp. The neck—which BTW, should have looked like this—got lost. Someone tried to replace the missing Martin neck with that of a Conn, but that didn’t work out too well. Since the horn was unplayable, the sax was then turned into a lamp. The Conn neck then got stored with the lamp until it ended up on eBay.
The bidding for this vintage Martin alto saxophone-turned lamp, plus bonus Conn neck, is to start at $149.00. At the time of writing there were no bids yet on these items. The auction is set to end on March 29.
Even if you don’t want the lamp, perhaps you need a neck for you Conn. Or if you’re looking for a lamp, you’ll turn around and sell the neck again if you don’t need it. Either way, it’s not a bad deal.
Update to Maker:
This is actually an Elkhart Band Instrument Co stencil, likely from the 1922-1926 time period. The configuration of the serial stamp is theirs. The G# cluster is theirs. The beveling was also on the Elkhart’s. The curved serial number is evident of Buescher relationship. Elkhart BIC was a subsidiary of Buescher.
The Martin stencils of this time period had a preceding one making them 150000 series and used the full word “LOW PITCH” before the serial. The serials were generally straight on stencils, but may have a slight bow on the Martin branded. Beveling on the Martin’s and their stencils tended to be of a concave configuration by the Martin 50000/150000 series.
Please refer to the “Elkhart Registry” thread in the saxontheweb forums for updates to the current study to develop a serial number dating system for Elkhart BIC.
Thank you Kurt! I gladly stand corrected.
I’ve never researched the brand, but upon re-reading my original article just now, I realized that I was wrong in the serial # aspect anyway. Since American stencils tended not to follow their name brand’s serial #’s anyway. Duh… It’s not like I don’t know this, since I have a whole page dedicated to stencils on my website… 😳 I can only guess I wrote this before finishing my 2nd cup of coffee in the morning.
In any event, thanks again for the correction, and all the detailed info you provided. This is a company I’m going to do a bit of reading about.
Cheers…helen
The first time around bidding started at $149.00 witch was 3 times what I would have been willing to pay plus shipping given its current condition. $69.00 was not a bad price over all :bang: :bang: 😛
Maybe prices have come down, but lamps made out of vintage horns used to sell for upwards of $150 on their own. I haven’t priced out necks for Conn New Wonders, but I had one that was looking for a neck, I’d have bought the 2 pieces, and then sold the lamp again.
The economy today has really turned everything upside down. We’re slowly seeing a turn around on some items I think, but it’s certainly taking it’s time.
Update: This lamp didn’t sell the first time around, so it got re-listed. On its 2nd time around on eBay, it didn’t last long. It found a home with only 1 bid for $69.00! 😯
I don’t know what happened. It should have sold the first time around. I guess no one noticed it. Whoever bought it got themselves a good deal.