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Very Strange Julius Keilwerth Alto

Helen

Content Expert Saxophones
Staff member
Administrator
Here's one that isn't what it appears to be...

I emailed the seller and told him that what he has isn't a JK. Needless to say he didn't change the ad.
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Can you spot all the inconsistencies? I gave up counting after about 10 or 15....

I figure it should sell for no more than $500--based on what the brand's altos go for. (And that is top $.)

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Well, "Julius Keilwerth" is engraved on the bell :D.

I was much, much more interested in looking at the New King bari this guy has for sale. However, he's one of the hundreds of folks on eBay that don't know how to take a pic in focus.

I really didn't have to go further than one thing that's consistent with most D&J horns. I've never really sat down and looked to enumerate all the differences between a D&J and a Keilwerth. I can tell another thing from the ad's contents, though.

Helen, it doesn't look like you have any D&J horns with the "Julius Keilwerth" stencil name. I haven't looked through all the rest of your stencils, but are there others with the "JGK Best in the World" stamp? I know that's on some of the Amati-built Tonekings.
 
Helen, it doesn't look like you have any D&J horns with the "Julius Keilwerth" stencil name. I haven't looked through all the rest of your stencils, but are there others with the "JGK Best in the World" stamp?

Nope, never seen a D&J engraved Julius Keilwerth. Nor have I seen a Best In The World stamp, but... Here's the thing, the JK logo on the back looks wrong to me. I have never seen one that was hand engraved. They are all perfectly uniformly round. The one on this horn looks "off" to me. It looks like it might have been hand engraved.

Here's what I suspect happened, I do have a couple examples in my gallery of unstencilled D&J horns, I suspect someone got their hands on one of these, and turned it into a "Julius Keilwerth" alto. Then at a later date, someone else either tried to cover that up by buffing out that stamping a bit. Or, the photography really is that sucky... :p Regardless, the lovely engraving was done later in the horn's life, after it left the D&J factory--waaay later.

Of course suspicion is not fact. And I cannot prove suspicion. Whatever the case, there is nothing about the horn that is remotely authentic JK. Having said that, it could be that it is one of the horns that JK got when they took over the D&J plant. However, even that doesn't jive, since the serial # isn't late enough in the production run to put it close to when JK took over D&J in the late 60s.

BTW, I have done the point to point comparisons between JK & D&J. You can find the illustrated info on that, and all you ever wanted to know about the German stencil horns on the brand's page on my website. ;) I should be kind and put some anchor tags and a navigation tool at the top of the page some time like I now do on all my brand info pages. Once I'm on the new server, I'll do that on my D&J, Hohner, etc pages that are packed full of info.
 
Added pics to your first post.

The horn was obviously de-lacquered at some point. IMO, I think the horn was just used for engraving practice. I haven't seen any other JK or D&J horns fully engraved like that. When I first looked at the horn, I thought it was being sold by silver-sax, the "creator" of the King Super 22 and re-engraver/replater of other horns (pics below).

Regarding the "JGK Best in the World" trademark, you're right that it doesn't look very sharp. If I had ever seen any examples of D&J horns with that stamp, I'd just say it was badly struck. However, because neither of us have seen that on a D&J, it was probably added much later.

The serial number looks very well stamped, too, and it looks like a stamp, not engraving.

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Am I missing something? The Prelude looks legit. I must admit I only quickly scanned the pics. The features looks right, as does the serial # stamping in relation to the features--I haven't seriously looked up the # to confirm build year vis a vis features.

What am I missing?
 
You're not missing anything. It's just a strange JK alto :p.

Making it a bit stranger, generally stencils have just a name on the bell. In this case it's "Prelude made for Hakkert." It's also the first "Prelude" horn I've seen, so one for your stencil list.
 
It's also the first "Prelude" horn I've seen, so one for your stencil list.

Thank you. I thought perhaps you thought it was a counterfeit. Sorry 'bout the misunderstanding. :)
 
No prob.

We should start talking about the Defiant brand, some time. English brand that was made up of generally Germanic imports.
 
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