Well here is something I haven’t seen before, a new J’Élle Stainer bass saxophone on eBay.
Source: eBay.com
This is what the seller, Hollywood Music World, says about the horn:
J’elle Stainer Extreme Saxophones – Bass Saxophone
Vintage Style Bass Sax with Low A
Brand new Bass sax just out by J’elle Stainer Extreme Saxophones. Keyed from Low A to high F#. Plays real easy from the bottom to the top. What a sound. E-mail me for a sound sample. Strong metal, a great neck, and solid keywork make this bass sax easy to play. This gives the instrument a very even feel and even sound! Also comes with a hard rubber Bass Sax mouthpiece with a beautiful ligature. It comes with a hard case on wheels that really protects the horn well. The case is also made from lightweight material.
Watch out for imposters on ebay claiming to have bass saxes for sale when they dont really have the instrument at all. There is a lot of fraud going on out there on ebay. Only buy the J’Elle Stainer Bass Sax from an authorized dealer.
E-mail us with any questions. $15,998 retail price. Currently in stock and ready to ship! The price listed on ebay is a 4 week introductory special, pricing is going up in early January, so jump on this holiday special while you can.
Also comes with limited approval period to make sure you are completely satisfied.
We are a factory authorized dealer for Selmer, Leblanc, Buffet, Yanagisawa & International Woodwind. Check out our other vintage and new saxes and woodwinds we have for sale available on ebay. Be sure to check out the International Woodwind Brand of saxophones and flutes, that is currently being offered on ebay.
This sax is priced to move. And if you are one of our European Customers you are in good shape. With the low US dollar to the euro you get this baby for a great price.
The Buy It Now price is $7499.00. Or you can take your chance at auction, and start with an opening bid of $7,000.
Here is a shot of the unique ligature & the mouthpiece that comes with the sax.
Source: eBay.com
Although I suppose this is to be a shot of the engraving, it can’t really be made out very well. What you can see though, is the triple neck strap ring.
Source: eBay.com
You can make out double body to bell bracing in this shot.
Source: eBay.com
Apparently it also comes with a floor peg, which is also a nice feature for a horn of this size.
Source: eBay.com
The auction ends of Christmas Eve, so if you’re interested, you still have a couple of days left to make your appeal to Santa. 
If you’re interested in finding out more about J’Élle Stainer saxophones, you can check out their website. They have a very unique web address. Rather than using the company name, they can be found by their horns’ frequency: Below65-4hz.com.
Update: Well this bass sax by J’Élle Stainer finally found a new home. Wow! That took a bit of effort.
When the auction closed there were 12 bids on the sax. The winning bid was $4550.00. 😯 That’s nearly $3,000 less then the Buy It Now price in December, when this horn first appeared on eBay.
Update…Again…(2nd time today) 😕 They must really want to move this thing out of their store …. This horn is back on eBay. I just saw it tonight.
This time it appears to be a no reserve auction, of very short duration. The auction’s end date is July 29. At the time of writing there were already 3 bids on this Brazilian bass sax. The high bid was $1050.00. The auction had also received 76 views when I saw it at 9:45 PM Pacific Time.
Update: This horn did not sell… Again… And what is even stranger is that according to the visit counter at the bottom of the listing, and who knows how accurate that actually is, there were only 130 views of this listing. This is just weird.
Update: The J’Elle Stainer is back on eBay. This time the Buy It Now price is: $5,999.00. The auction ends on July 18. So far there are no offers yet on this sax.
I suppose technically the Tubax is somewhere between a saxophone and a sarrusophone, since it has a narrower cone than a normal saxophone. This is also why it uses bari or bass mouthpieces. Still, it’s a single reed instrument and it sounds like one. The extra brightness is not a bad thing for a horn that low, since the fundamental is not going to be sensed strongly by the human ear anyhow. Throwing more energy into the harmonics and letting the brain reconstruct the fundamental should mean more effective volume for the same amount of effort.
I believe the compact contrabass is looped around, but has bore dimensions similar to a normal up-down-up shaped saxophone. The curves will have acoustic effects (and you can’t go throwing wine corks in UPPER bows!) but that seems to be a necessary sacrifice for a more compact instrument. I just remember that the paperclip contras were made in Brazil, so when I saw a Brazilian commenting, I wondered if that’s what he had.
The J’Élle Stainer low Bb compact contrabass that Heber was referring to is made in Brazil. Their website states the size as: height 130 cm / aprox. 51 in
The compact contrabass that only goes to low b looks more “paperclip-like” to me. It’s size is listed as: height 114 cm / aprox. 45 in
Is J’elle the one in paperclip style, so that it’s even more compact than a Tubax? It wouldn’t help with the weight, but it would help with the handling, as well as making it a lot easier to get in and out of a car.
Yes, I’d love to see a photo of a Tubax and the compact contrabass by J’Elle side by side so we could actually see any size differences.
I’m also curious about the whole “is the Tubax actually a sax” debate, and how that would apply to the J’Elle compact contra, if it does at all.
It’s too bad that so few people have played the J’Elle. The company might be well known in their local area, but so far they have yet to make a dent (pardon the pun) into the large sax market globally.
I have seen and play the compact contrabass sax lowBb made by J’Elle, that was VERY GOOD.
I play bass and bari in my church…
But today, 15/06/09… I’m so happy…
Very good LOW Bb……………………. 😯
Hello Heber. Welcome to my website.
Thank you for writing about your experience with the J’Elle contrabass saxophone. Many of us here in North America are interested in these instruments, but because they are really not readily available, we don’t have a chance to try them. It’s great when someone who has played one comments.
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you do so again.
Regards,
Helen
Update: The horn did not sell this time around either. The auction ended with 0 bids on the bass.
It has already been re-listed again, but this time they added a few new pics. Starting bid is $6,499.00. Buy It Now Price is $7,499.00.
It is just clearly not a good time to be selling big horns.
Mmm…Same pictures as before. Same Buy It Now price as before, but with a $500 lower starting bid price. I suspect it’s the same horn. Interesting that they’re now calling it B Stock. And that they’re fessing up to it being somewhat damaged, hence the price.
I love the line that says: “Call us for a sound sample.” I have visions of phoning them, and someone playing me some riffs & a tune over the phone. 😆 I’m sure that’s not what they meant, but it could certainly be interpreted that way.
Well it looks like there is another one of these one Ebay. This one is not exactly new and a little beat up. They refer to it as “B Stock.”
Update: This auction ended on Dec. 24 with 0 bids on the sax. Bad timing I suspect. My prediction, we’ll see it again soon, perhaps early in the New Year.
Well this question would probably be better answered on the Woodwind Forum as I am just a hobbyist. I was in the market to purchase an Eppelsheim and had a piece that I will play repeatedly by Ward Baxter called “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” with many, many low A’s. So I sprung for the extra length on the bell, cup, and keyage. I also got a custom lacquer and engraving done on the instrument. It cost more than most of my friends cars, but for me it was a purchase of a life time. Be well and happy holidays all.
I was thinking low CONCERT A might appear in works that were transcribed from bassoon parts, but I had no idea composers and arrangers were treating bass sax like a larger version of the baritone. A low A on a C-bass or C-contrabass would be quite useful because of the corresponding bassoon and contrabassoon notes, it just didn’t strike me as being as useful on a Bb instrument.
Then again I find myself using low B and Bb a LOT on my C-mel (and sometimes wish for an A, particularly in the bridge of “Body and Soul” — I usually end up lipping Bb down a half step, in subtone), where I used them much less frequently on tenor. In the bands I play with, there is exactly ONE song in the whole book which calls for a tenor low Bb (three times), and neither band ever plays it. Low B does not appear at all.
If I tried to plug the C-mel into a big band tenor setting, I might have more trouble. No more honking low (tenor) Bb at the end of “In The Mood”, just about the only redeeming feature of that entire tune, but if I ever have to play that song again it will be too soon. I’d also have to transpose on the fly, which can be rather treacherous with those highly chromatic 4th tenor parts. Covering 2nd alto would eliminate the range issue but the transposition is even nastier. Besides, I don’t mind playing alto, and can still do a wider array of stunts and “hooligan sax” than on any other horn in the arsenal, though the C-mel is starting to catch up. Having to finesse G3 is still a problem, one I hope the Aquilasax will solve. If not, I have figured out where the vent needs to be to facilitate a clean G3 and will get it hacked in by a professional (it’s WAY beyond my skill level to add tone holes).
I think the native key of the horn has a lot to do with whether or not a low A is a particularly useful addition. Horn in Eb? Definitely. Horn in C? Sure. Horn in Bb? Not quite as much. But if people are writing for it, then performers have to be prepared to play it, or we have a chicken-and-egg problem.
Well this is from the same company that will add a low A or G (at least I think I remember they will do a low G as well) to your tenor if you send it to them, so why not build a low A bass?
Gandalfe could speak a bit more on this, so I’ll ping him and ask him to chime in here, since he has an Eppelsheim Low A bass sax. Bottom line: there are some pieces of bass sax music written that are peppered with low A’s in them. Go figure… 😕
I’m left wondering a bit at the low A — it doesn’t match the compass of any instrument I can think of, which it might be trying to fill in for. The low A on a bari gives it a concert C (cello range), and low A would make sense on soprano and alto for the same reasons (violin and viola range). I presume this is what low A altos were all about, and I would still like to have one at some point. But who is writing low A for bass saxophone?
He probably knows now…
I don’t know if he ever said anything about it. But I was wondering if he signed a model release, and if he knew his photo would be used in promotional materials! 😯
Do we know what Jay thought of the instrument?