{"id":61387,"date":"2025-11-26T09:36:35","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T17:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bassic-sax.info\/blog\/?p=61387"},"modified":"2025-11-26T09:36:35","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T17:36:35","slug":"anyone-familiar-with-nikkan-saxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bassic-sax.info\/blog\/2025\/anyone-familiar-with-nikkan-saxes\/","title":{"rendered":"Anyone familiar with Nikkan saxes?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"saxophone<\/a>
Nikkan alto. Source: tgmstore on eBay.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The other day something crossed my radar screen that I hadn’t seen before: a vintage Nikkan alto on eBay that looked ever so much like a clone of an early 6M. Now I am purposely not providing any links to the sales, since something seems a bit hinky: The same horn and photos appear for sale by three different sellers, and with three different prices.<\/p>\n

This article isn’t so much about the sale of the horn per say, but about the sax itself, and that it exists at all. <\/p>\n

Now admittedly I am not up on Japanese-made saxophones. Between my colleague Pete Hales and myself, those really were more Pete’s area of expertise. But more on that below<\/a>. I am however, quite knowledgeable about vintage American-made horns, and have about 10 in my personal collection of vintage saxophones\u2014with Conns overly represented \"\"<\/a> .<\/p>\n

The more I studied the photos of this Nikkan alto, the more it appeared to me that it was yet another example of the reverse engineering that Japan became infamous for, and that ultimately had led to the demise of so so many Western companies all over Europe and North America.<\/p>\n

Nikkan company history<\/h3>\n

Prior to seeing this alto, I don’t recall ever seeing or hearing about the Nikkan brand before. But then then since I don’t spend my life studying or researching Japanese-made saxophones, that kinda’ makes sense. However, even as I researched the brand for this article, I was surprised how little information was available.<\/p>\n

My hardcopy books on saxophone history had exactly zero for the company\u2014yes, even my English language books, or books written about all brands of saxophones, and not focusing solely on those from European locales. <\/p>\n

So down the rabbit hole of Internet-based research I went. Weirdly enough, not a lot there either, and what was, was quite murky, and often contradictory depending on which frame of reference it was written from.<\/p>\n

One of the most concise, and likely authoritative, can be found in an article by Jay Metcalf,<\/a> in which he interviewed the current President of Yanagisawa. Another valuable source of info comes from the Yamaha company history page<\/a>, and this page about their Xeno Series trumpets.<\/a><\/p>\n

Combined together, Nikkan’s history looks like this:<\/p>\n