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Cheap Horns

pete

Brassica Oleracea
Staff member
Administrator
As an outgrowth of my little thread on Yamaha student saxophones under $500, I expanded my search parameters a bit to try to determine the very current "base" price for intermediate and pro horns. I'm still looking at active auction Buy-it-Now prices, but not looking at dealer feedback, as long is it's comfortably in the double-digits. I'm also not looking at the zillions of Chinese and Taiwanese extra-cheap horns that are on eBay.

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* Interesting: here's a rough, but intact, Conn 12M stencil baritone and here's the horn it was stenciled from. They're from approx. 1970 and the second horn (allegedly) has new pads. Both are sitting at $1000. The cheapest new bari that's sold at a major dealer in the US is the Allora, which is $2000 and, in the UK, it's the Sakkusu at $1300. You could throw $800 at either of these horns -- possibly less for the "real" Conn -- and I'm pretty sure you'd end up with a MUCH better horn than either the Sakkusu or Allora.

* The cheapest modern (i.e. post Selmer Mark VI) pro alto is this H-Couf Superba 2 at $900. There are a bunch of Yamaha 3x and 5x, as well as Yanagisawa Series 3 (no, that isn't a 900 series. This "900" is probably Yani's reference to what region the horn was sold in), Series 4, and 500 horns in the $700 to $1000 range, too, but, excepting the Yanagisawa 3 Series, those are/were marketed as intermediate models.

* Vintage straight sopranos start appearing at the $750 mark (no, this isn't a Conn) as well as "intermediate" modern straight and curved sopranos.

* I mention on the other thread that the cheapest Yamaha 23 tenor I saw was $450. Intermediate-quality tenors start appearing around $600. I saw a couple of early Selmer-era Buescher 400s around $650-$700. We can argue about their quality or if they should be ranked as "intermediate" or "pro." :D

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Obviously, if you decide you want to go with straight auctions or different search parameters, you can get different results. I also think that all of the above will need some degree of repair work, so, budget at least an extra $300 for the sopranos and altos, $500 for the tenors, and $800 for the baritones. Please also note, again, that these are current auctions. If you are going the auction route, I recommend that you look at closed eBay ads to get a feel for the prices on a specific make/model.
 
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