The Chicago Musical Instrument Co.
The Chicago Musical Instrument Co.

The Chicago Musical Instrument Co.

Chicago Musical Instrument Co., 1931 catalogue, vintage catalogue cover page, general catalog number 32

One of the vintage catalogues I was sent a few years ago was for the Chicago Musical Instrument Co. The catalogue is recorded as being from 1931.

If anyone is interested in the company’s history, according to Wikipedia, Chicago Musical Instrument Co. was a musical instrument distributor between 1920 and 1969. During its 49 year history, the company acquired a number of famous names as subsidiaries, including: Gibson Guitars, Epiphone, Lowrey Organs, F.E. Olds, William Lewis & Son Co., Krauth & Beninghoften, L.D. Heater Music Company, as well as Selmer UK.

Among the various interesting odds and sods contained in the 1931 catalogue that I have, are pages dedicated to the saxophone brands that the company sold. Over the next few days I’m going to post the various pages for Martin, Pan American, and Cavalier saxophones. To my knowledge this will be the first time that these particular vintage catalogue pages have appeared online.

Chicago Musical Instrument Co. sells Martin Handcraft saxophones


Chicago Musical Instrument Co., 1931 catalogue, Martin Handcraft Instruments,

I have a Martin Handcraft tenor. For many years it was my only backup tenor, and truth be told, it went out on many gigs before my Mark VI did.

There is just something special about the Handcraft. It has a special sound—a special something that can’t quite be described—but once you hear it, you know what it is.

Even compared to my friend’s Committee III tenor, my ergo-challenged Handcraft outshines it in the sound and tone department. Why? I don’t know. Because these vintage horns were all built by hand they are all slightly different. Maybe I just happened to end up with one that got a bit of magic dust sprinkled on it by the fairies over at Martin. 😉   Whatever the case, my Handcraft kicks some serious ass. It is perhaps the most rich-sounding sax I have, but without a doubt, the least friendliest to play. (Especially nowadays that my fingers don’t work quite as fast and as well as they used to.)

The Martin Troubadour

If you look at the Martin specialty site, themartinstory.net, you’ll notice that Edwin refers to the Troubadour as a transitional model. These horns only had two right hand palm keys, but depending on how you used them, they opened different keys. Thus they still worked like three palm keys did.

When my buddy Pete Hales still owned saxpics, he described the operation of the palm keys like this:

These horns have a very interesting key mechanism: only two RH palm keys that do the work of three. In actuality, while the altissimo E/F vent key is eliminated, the function is not. What essentially happens is when you play high enough (high B and above, if I remember correctly), a double spring “activates” the chromatic side C key as the altissimo E/F vent key. This sounds like a kinda freaky idea, but this same feature was found on the late King Voll True and early Voll True II — which was produced at about the same time (and for about as long 🙂 )

Eb alto

Chicago Musical Instrument Co., 1931 catalogue, Troubadour, alto sax, Martin Handcraft saxophone

Bb tenor

Chicago Musical Instrument Co., 1931 catalogue, Troubadour, tenor sax, Martin Handcraft saxophone

Eb baritone

We bari players have to wait years longer than alto and tenor players before the new models of horns arrive in our voice. (Just think how long it took Selmer to roll out the Super Action 80 Series III bari!) This 1931 catalogue would indicate that bari players did not have the option of buying a Martin Troubadour bari that year. However, note that the horn pictured in the catalogue only has two right palm keys.

I poured through the images on The Martin Story, saxpics, as well as the few I have in my own gallery, and noticed that without fail all the Martin Handcraft baritones had two right palm keys, yet were all keyed to high F. Huh? Does this mean that they all utilized this specialized key mechanism from The Troubadour before it was introduced in that model? I can’t imagine it, yet I can’t explain the key layout either.

If anyone has a Martin Handcraft baritone with only two palm keys that is keyed to high F, and can explain this, please leave a comment. Thanks!

Chicago Musical Instrument Co., 1931 catalogue, bari sax, Martin Handcraft saxophone, low Bb baritone saxophone

C melody & Bb soprano

Like their Eb baritone cousins, the C mel and the Bb soprano didn’t get the upgrade to The Troubadour immediately—if at all. None of the online galleries that I have seen show these horns available in The Troubadour model, which kind of makes sense, since it was a transitional model.

Chicago Musical Instrument Co., 1931 catalogue, C melody sax, Martin Handcraft saxophone, soprano sax, straight soprano saxophone, C pitched tenor saxophone

I hope you have enjoyed these interesting bits of Martin saxophone historic trivia. I always like to see what things sold for when they were new back in the day, and compare them to what we pay for our pro horns today.

If you are interested in doing some of that, one tool to do this with is this inflation calculator from the US Dept of Labor. It tells me that if I had wanted to buy the baritone with Finish 2 for $200.00, in today’s dollars it would cost me $3,133.32 US. (Case not included in that price.) Now interestingly enough, where can you find a new, pro-model, handmade saxophone for that amount of money?

I’ll let you ponder on that. Feel free to chime in with comments.

I’ll post the pages on Pan American saxophones in the next day or two.

…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!
 

11 Comments

  1. Paul Lindemeyer

    That combination side C/E key wasn’t unique to Martin, let alone the Troubadours. You see it briefly on the earliest Conn baritones keyed to F, about 1924, and again on the 14M bass to F.

    My 1930 Typewriter bari has it too. It’s oddly stiff and creaky on that horn and I haven’t figured it out why yet…

  2. Helen, Interesting that they haven’t upgraded the artwork (if it’s a 1931 catalogue) to cover the C-Melody that they were selling into the 30’s, with Front-F, no G# trill or forked Eb, and much better palm keys etc.

    I also have a (stencil) Martin C with front F, so they were still selling enough for them to be farmed out as stencils.

    I suppose I really should check if mine is the Troubador or whatever, certainly interesting engraving.

    http://csax.net/saxophones/my-martin.htm

    1. Interesting. I’m guessing this was an early 1931 catalogue, and your horn was built in late 1931, or even later. They must have updated their C mels later in the year. Isn’t yours then a Troubadour?

  3. JC

    Helen, the picture of a baritone sax is that of a Conn New Wonder. Note the shape of the low C keyguard, and the (odd) octave pad location on the neck, but operated by a key assy located on the body.

    No idea why Martin copped a Conn picture; they may have been stenciling at that point, or they did so years before and thus had the picture available to them, are my best guesses.

  4. Theo

    When you calculate the inflation corrected alto price it is 21% of the price of a silver eagle saxophone. Both are handmade top market instruments for their time.
    I wonder how the 79% difference splits in profits, overhead and direct costs.

    1. leonAzul

      I grasp your question, yet I would suggest there are a number of reasons why such a direct comparison isn’t really possible.

      The most obvious is the material composition. The Martin is primarily constructed of brass (copper, zinc, tin, traces of lead) with optional plating. The Powell featured significant amounts of solid silver.

      The other is tooling, arguably the most significant cost in any mass production flow. The tooling for the Martin was a minor adaptation from a known successful design (which I strongly suspect owes a great debt to either Markneukirchen or Kraslice ;). The Powell tooling was being complete re-worked almost from scratch.

      1. Actually Paul, IIRC, the company that made the Silver Eagle bought all of B&S’s saxophone tooling… Or so the story goes at least. What they did with it however, is anyone’s guess, but I would presume that they used at least some of it.

        1. leonAzul

          As I understand it, the tooling for the bore was developed and adjusted to taste from shop drawings acquired from the H. N. White estate. The instrument was intended to sound like a refined version of a King Silver Sonic™.

          To expedite the prototyping and production of the Silver Eagle™, Powell also acquired the tooling for the keywork from B & S.

          This way of doing things makes a great deal of sense given the history of Powell and Haynes.

          😉

      2. Theo

        The Powell flutes ($250 in 1930) have a similar calculated percentage of 49, which seems ok for the buyers. The 79% seems to be too much.

        It shows that in some cases it is acceptable that prices of musical instruments grow faster than inflation.
        I guess it is the case for most woodwinds.

        :nuclear:

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