Hammerschmidt in Burgau, Germany

Tone holes

Soldered/bevelled

Drawn/rolled

Key guards

Wire

Flat cups & arm attachment

Plexiglas

Metal

Which is better?

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Hammerschmidt saxophone features

Buckle up. There are A LOT, and I do mean a lot of things we see that Hammerschmidt put into their saxes. Klingsor/n saxophones were chocked full of features. Even their simplest version (Version C), was  not a cheap horn per say, and offered quite a bit in the features department.

So let’s take a trip back to the company’s heyday of saxophone production. We’ll look at what the Klingsor/n horns are, and why some versions are as spectacular as they are.

Tone Holes

Soldered & bevelled

The very earliest Klingson saxophones the company built had soldered and beveled tone holes like those we see in Martin saxophones. 

Drawn & rolled

It didn’t take very long however, and Hammerschmidt was making saxophones with rolled tone holes. By serial # 01xx this was a consistent feature, although isolated horns were seen with rolled tones holes under #0100 as well (alto #055).

Key guards

Without a doubt on of the things that makes Hammerschmidt Klingsor/n saxophones stand out from the rest of their contemporaries, are the Plexiglas key guards that some versions had. However, the Plexiglas guards were only one of the features that were offered. Before Plexiglas we saw much prettier ones—IMHO anyway.

Wire key guards

The wire guards that Hammerschmidt put on its earliest horns are in to my eye, the prettiest of all the key guards the company ever made. They are also arguably the most beautiful key guards of their era. Call them eyebrow key guards, or ornate wire, or whatever you wish, these are truly a beautiful piece of art. 

Type 1 Wire – alto 

Type 1 – tenor

This is the same guard as the alto above, but the bell keys are further apart, so there is no eyebrow formed between the low B and Bb key cups.

Type 2 Wire

Flat key cups & arm attachment

Something that made the very earliest Hammerschmidts stand out is not only their unique wire key guards, but also the way the key arms were attached to the flat key cups. I have so far only seen this in 4 horns, and all have been under the serial #0100. 

These flat key cups are only seen on altos and tenors with Type 1 & 2 wire keys, and all 3 examples above illustrate this feature.

Type 3 Wire

Plexiglas key guards

Hammerschmidt is only one of two European companies that was putting Plexiglas on their saxophones. Keilwerth of course made the famous angelwing key guards out of the same kind of material. However, for whatever reasons, Hammerschmidt guards appear to have held up better in the long. (I am guessing it has to do with their design, but that’s neither here nor there at this point.) 

Both the tenor and alto had 3 Plexiglass guards: low Eb, low C, and a larger guard for the right-sided low B and Bb keys.

Plexiglas alto

Plexiglas Tenor 1

With only 1 exception I have seen so far, the tenor sax Plexiglas key guards were identical to those we see in the alto. 

Plexiglas tenor Type 2

This very early Plexiglas key guard on tenor #0128 is shaped differently than what was to come later. Despite their different shape however, the bow and bell keys are still covered by 2 separate guards, which makes them completely different than JK’s angelwing. 

The below-shown tenor is the only Hammerschmidt saxophone I have ever seen with with shape of Plexiglas key guards. Was it simply an prototype? A custom order? Or have the original guards been replaced?  

Metal key guards 

The sheet metal key guards were identical in shape on both the alto and tenor. I have not seen any variances in style in design. As with the Plexiglass guards, the low Eb, C, and B & Bb were covered by key guards.

Sheet metal alto

Sheet metal tenor

Which were better? Plexiglas or sheet metal?

Based on what I have seen in reviewing well over 100 Hammerschmidt-made saxophones from Burgau, it would appear that when the company made the switch away from ornate wire guards, both Plexiglas and sheet metal guards were used on horns simultaneously. Although in the early days sheet metal was mostly offered for their stencils horns like the Silvertone that they made for Sears, by Klingsor alto 01055, sheet metal guards were a standard feature on approx. half of the Klingsor/n saxophones that they produced. 

As a matter of fact, in the 1961 company catalogue I was sent years ago, Hammerschmidt writes the following on their saxophone page:

…verdecter Klappenschutz aus Plexiglas oder Metall…

In English this means:

…key guards made of Plexiglas or metal…

This was just a line in a description. The key guards were not listed as an upcharge like the high F# or mircotuner was. In my estimation, Hammerschmidt saw both as the same, and likely developed them for a specific market (American) where Plexiglas wasn’t as popular. This was something that JK did as well. The metal version of the angelwing was originally designed for horns destined for export to the American market.