Silvertone was the stencil name that was sold by Sears Roebuck during the first half of the 20th century. Usually the Silvertone saxophones were made by American horn makers like Buescher and Conn. However, German manufacturers Hammerschmidt, and even J. Keilwerth, made the occasional horn for Sears Roebuck.
When I first saw this Silvertone sax on eBay, I had to check it a couple of times to make sure that I was indeed seeing a Hammerschmidt stencil horn. The photos were very small, and the seller had written that the sax was made in the U.S. I even emailed the seller to confirm a country of origin, and he insisted that it came from the States. (In the meantime I’ve seen a few of these and have collected their images. See below.)
The eBay ad itself provided no real information about the sax, other than to say it had a U.S. patent number, but didn’t give it. The serial number is 06XX.
This alto does have enough features of a Hammerschmidt however, that it is easily identifiable:
- The ridging on the underside of the neck that acts as the neck guard;
- The shape of the low B, Bb, & C key guards, and the way the decorative circles in the centre of them do not line up with the felt bumpers on the keys;
- The shape of the left pinkie table;
- The rolled tone holes;
- The shape and location of the G# trill key and;
- The shape & location of the chromatic F# key.
Source: eBay.com
Because the of the size of the various vintage saxophone galleries on my site—and the lack of their searchability—I have created a separate area of my site called Bassic Sax Pix. Bassic Sax Pix allows you to find what you’re looking for quickly and easily. I have therefore stopped updating the individual Hammerschmidt and Hammerschmidt Stencil galleries here, and have copied all of the information already contained in these galleries over to the Hammerschmidt galleries at Bassic Sax Pix.
New Hammerschmidt and Hammerschmidt stencil horn images continue to be added regularly to the galleries at Bassic Sax Pix. If you are looking for photos of Hammerschmidt stencil horns, I recommend you jump to the bigger, and more searchable galleries. Fear not however, I will continue to add more stencil names to this list as I find them. They will just link to the new galleries.
