Adolphe Sax Bari

[pete]

eBay.

The seller doesn't have it listed as "worldwide," so if you only like going to ebay.com, you might not see it (he ships worldwide). Needs a lot of work, but currently 658 Euros. I can't read the serial, but the seller says "from 1850."

"In my day, we had one side key and that was good enough! Young whippersnappers with your fancy altissimo G ...."

 

[Groovekiller]

Price is rising rapidly. It needs work to the tune of $2,000 US. Still, it's not outrageous until the price hits $7,500 or so.

 

[saxhound]

That octave key and those bell key mechanisms are pretty scary. Must be a beast to get them adjusted properly.

 

[Helen]

Unless I'm reading it wrong, the horn sold with 29 bids for 1.211,00 EUR. That's a pretty good price--even if you factor in the money needed for a restoration. (Most likely more than $2K in Europe.)

 

[SOTSDO]

That octave key and those bell key mechanisms are pretty scary.

It looks like a manual octave key to me - not much there to adjust, other than perhaps the mental outlook of the player having to use one.

I started out on a manual double register key on a Buffet Albert bass clarinet. After a bit of a hiatus on a soprano, I again started bass, this time on a modern bass with the slightly more complicated "automatic" register key. It was much simpler than the manual register, to put it mildly. However, I can go back to the manual with only the smallest of time becoming reacclimated to same.

(The worst thing about playing my manual register key instruments is having to inhale the funk that issues forth from the ancient things...)

 

[pete]

That's $1640 US (today's exchange rate). That's not just a good deal, that's an *outstanding* deal. Yes, a couple tonehole chimneys are missing and some others need to be resoldered, but, even if you had to put $6K into it to make it perfect, you're at about the price Groove mentions -- and that's not for a perfect horn. Considering he has an A. Sax bari, I'd say he knows the value . (Actually, this is an older bari than Groove's, from before the original A. Sax patents expired. That might make it more valuable.)

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I briefly played a Couesnon bari with double octave keys. It didn't take that much to get used to it. The lack of chromatic/extra keywork took more getting used to. "Where's that Bis key?"

 

[Helen]

The lack of Bis key isn't so much a problem for me when I play my minty 1886 Buffet bari. (Playing my Buescher bass has really lowered my expectations.) ;-) But the double octave keys do mess me up... a lot. Granted, I haven't spent as much time on the Buffet as I have on my bass, so perhaps in time I will get used to when to switch from the 1 to both octave keys. In theory it makes sense, but when playing fast passages, it just doesn't happen for me.

 

[SOTSDO]

I have found that "rolling" the thumb from one to another, in effect operating one touchpiece with one side of the thumb and the other with the other) works the best. Trying to discretely "finger" the touch piece (like you would on one of the four LH little finger keys on most clarinets) takes way too long. The bass clarinets that I have played (and currently own) work well enough if there is a brief instant where one register is closing and the other is opening, as you roll from one to the other.

Like anything else, practice makes perfect. As they taught me in drill instructor school, you have to repeat an action some three hundred times to make it routine and automatic. Hammer those over the break studies for a couple of weeks, and it will be second nature.

Of course, it helps that I started out with a double register key setup on my grandfather's old Buffet bass, an Albert system horn that was pitched in A. If you do it from the start, automatic or single register key instrument seem like they are simple to play.

On saxes, I haven't a clue. I do know that my Yamaha baritone has an octave key arrangement where two vents are set to open at almost the same time, and occluding the lower vent and opening the upper one makes for a less smooth transition, but one that works all the same. So, cracking both vents at the same time may work as long as you end up with the correct one for the pitch once it's all closed up.

 

[pete]

Maybe we should have a club for sax players that have or used double-octave-key (more precisely, "non-automatic") horns. Although there were horns available through the 1940s with the non-auto keys, I still think that club would be really small.