{"id":17862,"date":"2010-03-18T12:36:40","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T19:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bassic-sax.info\/blog\/?p=17862"},"modified":"2010-03-18T12:36:45","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T19:36:45","slug":"the-mystery-la-fleur-lafleur-alto-in-detail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bassic-sax.info\/blog\/2010\/the-mystery-la-fleur-lafleur-alto-in-detail\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mystery La Fleur (Lafleur) Alto In Detail"},"content":{"rendered":"

My new sax player friend Kevin, and I got together a couple of days ago. Kevin is the one who bought that mysterious La Fleur alto<\/a>\u2014that at first blush looked liked a Hammerschmidt\u2014that strongly resembles the English-made H\u00fcttl tenor<\/a> that was sold on eBay a few years ago.<\/p>\n

When Kevin and I got together on Tuesday, I\u00a0took some photos of this strange little sax.<\/p>\n

Kevin is in the process of rebuilding the horn. He is still awaiting some pads, so that is why you will notice in these photos that\u00a0some of the screws are not tightened down all the way.<\/p>\n

If you’re familiar with the photos I normally take, you’ll notice that these are not quite of the same quality. I was suffering from some serious tremors on Tuesday. And although my camera is a very good one, and can compensate for a lot, there is only so much that digital, anti-shake technology is able to overcome.<\/p>\n

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In the next couple of photos what’s obvious is that this sax has no front F key.<\/p>\n

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Notice the nail file G#.<\/p>\n

For the left palm keys, Kevin\u00a0carved these custom\u00a0risers out of cork. They are really nice, and do the job extremely well.<\/p>\n

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The next 2 pics give you a good view of the rolled tone holes that this horn has.<\/p>\n

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This shot gives you a good view of the left pinkie cluster.<\/p>\n

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Note the straight edge on the right side of the octave lever. I don’t remember seeing a sax with that shape of lever before.<\/p>\n

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Here is a good picture of Kevin’s carved key risers.<\/p>\n

Although it’s hard to tell in these photos, the tone holes for the palm keys are the smallest I have ever seen on an alto. They are only \u00be’s of the size, or perhaps less,\u00a0of those of my Hammerschmidt.<\/p>\n

The body tube is extremely small in diameter. This had led to a number of people wondering if this was perhaps a high pitched horn. However, the sax has been restored enough now to be playable.\u00a0When I played it up against a tuner the other day, it definitely tuned to A=440. So it is indeed a low pitched sax.<\/p>\n

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Here you can clearly see that this sax only has 1 octave vent in the the body tube.<\/p>\n

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In the following photo you can see the number 3A stamped on the neck socket. This 3A is also stamped on the neck itself.<\/p>\n

Although the sax is stamped Made In England<\/em>, I have my doubts. I wonder if it wasn’t sent to England in pieces, and just assembled there to avoid tariffs.<\/p>\n

Or, another possibility is that a company in England bought the body tubes from a manufacturer, and just added their own keys. But which saxophone manufacturer made saxophones with very narrow body tubes, and rolled tone holes?<\/p>\n

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This ridging as a neck guard is something we’ve seen before in Hammerschmidts and Kohlerts.<\/p>\n

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Here you can see the 3A stamped on the front of the neck.<\/p>\n

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I don’t know what this # 21 means. I can’t imagine that it’s the serial number. However, it is a safe bet that this is a Varsity model La Fleur alto sax by J.R. Lafleur & Sons.\u00a0After carefully looking at this bell engraving, I’m thinking we’ve had the spelling of the company name wrong for months now.<\/p>\n

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So this horn remains somewhat of an enigma. That’s why I’ve posted these pictures here\u2014in hopes that someone might stumble across them and recognize this sax for what it really<\/span> is. That’s what happened with my H\u00fcttl. It took a few\u00a0years, but I discovered that what I had was really a rare Hammerschmidt saxophone. Perhaps we can unravel the mystery of Kevin’s sax for him in much the same way.<\/p>\n

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…this is just my blog<\/em>. <\/span> My \u201creal\u201d <\/b> website is<\/span> www.bassic-sax.info.<\/a> If you\u2019re looking for <\/span> sax info<\/strong>,<\/span> you should check it out too.<\/span>There\u2019s lots<\/em> there! <\/span>\n<\/div>\n
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My new sax player friend Kevin, and I got together a couple of days ago. Kevin is the one who bought that mysterious La Fleur …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[625,284,669,644,218,198,643,31],"class_list":["post-17862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alto-saxophone","tag-alto-saxophone","tag-la-fleur","tag-lafleur","tag-photos","tag-stencil-horn","tag-stencil-saxophone","tag-vintage-horns","tag-vintage-sax"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t