Orsi: Rhodium?

[pete]

When I hear about saxes, I've heard of them made of or plated with a bunch of things, but here's one I haven't heard of before. Heck, I even had to look up what rhodium IS. Anyhow, it appears to have been used in metal mouthpieces for the last 3 or so years. Not too much of a shock to me, as I'm not a mouthpiece "guy," in general, and I've never met a metal mouthpiece I liked, so I'm not searching. However, I found a saxophone plated in rhodium: a limited edition Rampone & Cazzani. It's not even on the R&C website. It's also 3,249.17 Pounds Sterling. That's a little north of $5100 US. For a soprano. Well, rhodium is more expensive than platinum ....

Absolutely beautiful horn, though.

 

[pete thomas]

When I hear about saxes, I've heard of them made of or plated with of bunch of things, but here's one I haven't heard of before. Heck, I even had to look up what rhodium IS. Anyhow, it appears to have been used in metal mouthpieces for the last 3 or so years.

Yes, I have a few of my PPTs in Rhodium plate. Although it is a precious metal, I think it's currently cheaper than gold or platinum, however the actual plating process is expensive.

I'm not sure how that equates to plating a whole saxophone though.

I decided to phase out the rhodium plate, I prefer the look of gold. Rhodium is a whitish colour, ie more like silver or nickel.

 

[pete]

Yes, I have a few of my PPTs in Rhodium plate. Although it is a precious metal, I think it's currently cheaper than gold or platinum, however the actual plating process is expensive.

I'm not sure how that equates to plating a whole saxophone though.

I decided to phase out the rhodium plate, I prefer the look of gold. Rhodium is a whitish colour, ie more like silver or nickel.

PPTs? I assume that's a name of a mouthpiece/mouthpiece manufacturer.

The whitish color is remarked upon in the Wikipedia article. Personally, I think platinum and rhodium both look rather like silver, too.

Regarding the price, I didn't notice that there was something else on the sax.co.uk page. It says,

"Ex-exhibition showpiece SAVE £2,143 off the £6,042 RRP. Due to being handled at a show & the nature of rhodium plate, this saxophone has aquired a few superficial marks."

That'd make the actual cost of a new one $9,545.34 US. That blows the most expensive soprano that's currently out there, which is the Yani SC-9937 sterling silver or the R&C sterling silver out of the water by $2000.

 

[pete thomas]

PPTs? I assume that's a name of a mouthpiece/mouthpiece manufacturer.

Yes, me:

http://tamingthesaxophone.com/tenor-saxophone-mouthpiece-ppt.html

 

[pete]

Yes, me:

http://tamingthesaxophone.com/tenor-saxophone-mouthpiece-ppt.html

Well, I've always said that I'm not a mouthpiece guy . Shall we guess what the second "P" stands for?

On a related note, when I go to your link, I get the attached error message. The problem is with Flashblock, which is a rather popular add-on/extension for a bunch of different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.). It's not enough just to whitelist your 'site to get rid of the error: you actually have to turn off Flashblock. The bit on the page that's causing the problem is that track list of songs. Just so ya know.

 

[pete thomas]

Well, I've always said that I'm not a mouthpiece guy . Shall we guess what the second "P" stands for?

On a related note, when I go to your link, I get the attached error message. The problem is with Flashblock, which is a rather popular add-on/extension for a bunch of different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.). It's not enough just to whitelist your 'site to get rid of the error: you actually have to turn off Flashblock. The bit on the page that's causing the problem is that track list of songs. Just so ya know.

Yes, the audio player uses Flash (except for Mobile browsers). Does that mean your add-on is stopping the audio from working?

 

[pete thomas]

Yes, the audio player uses Flash (except for Mobile browsers). Does that mean your add-on is stopping the audio from working?

Yes, I just looked into Flashblock. As the name suggests, it blocks Flash. I don't understand why anyone would do that, Flash is everywhere and probably still the most cross platform compatible format for video and audio. Or at least it was until the iPad came along!

The Flash Player on my site does need Flash enabled, and I notice Flashblock has a whitetlist feature, that does not work properly in that it assumes iframe content is on the parent site.

Audio on tamingthesaxophone.com was coming from my site at petethomas.co.uk, so the Flashblock whitelist was not working. I have now fixed the taming site so the whitelist should now be fine.

I'm glad you brought this up, I can't see the point of this extension, but at least now I can combat it!

Sorry for the hijack, back to Rhodium.

I imagine the R & C price is based the extra cost of Rhodium plating, which would probably be much lower if/when Rhodium plating gets more popular as the platers won't view it as a specialist thing.

I was under the impression that there were quite a few rhodium plated cheap Chinese saxophones, but I'm probably mistaken and thinking of mouthpieces.

I note that the sax.co.uk site mentions it has a few scratches due to "the nature of rhodium plate", which implies it scratches easily.

One of my rhodium mouthpieces arrived and did indeed scratch easily, so I sent it back. The other ones seem fine, so I imagine the plating process is indeed very tricky and critical, which is odd, because rhodium is supposed to be tougher than gold (I thought so anyway)

Meanwhile some rhodium:

 

[pete]

Yes, the audio player uses Flash (except for Mobile browsers). Does that mean your add-on is stopping the audio from working?

Yes, I just looked into Flashblock. As the name suggests, it blocks Flash. I don't understand why anyone would do that, Flash is everywhere and probably still the most cross platform compatible format for video and audio. Or at least it was until the iPad came along!

The Flash Player on my site does need Flash enabled, and I notice Flashblock has a whitetlist feature, that does not work properly in that it assumes iframe content is on the parent site.

Audio on tamingthesaxophone.com was coming from my site at petethomas.co.uk, so the Flashblock whitelist was not working. I have now fixed the taming site so the whitelist should now be fine.

I'm glad you brought this up, I can't see the point of this extension, but at least now I can combat it!

The point of the extension is ... to block Flash. Yes, it not only blocks the audio from your sample playback, you can't even see the player and its contents.

Flash is very common for advertisements. While I understand that some 'site might use an ad to gain revenue, etc., even the most popular ad pushers occasionally get a virus-infected ad and I really don't need that. Additionally, I rather dislike seeing a billion flashing Flash ads on, well, any website. I also use AdBlock and some of its add-ons and Do Not Track.

As far as Flashblock on Google Chrome is concerned, they have almost half a million users.

============

I imagine the R & C price is based the extra cost of Rhodium plating, which would probably be much lower if/when Rhodium plating gets more popular as the platers won't view it as a specialist thing.

I was under the impression that there were quite a few rhodium plated cheap Chinese saxophones, but I'm probably mistaken and thinking of mouthpieces.

I note that the sax.co.uk site mentions it has a few scratches due to "the nature of rhodium plate", which implies it scratches easily.

One of my rhodium mouthpieces arrived and did indeed scratch easily, so I sent it back. The other ones seem fine, so I imagine the plating process is indeed very tricky and critical, which is odd, because rhodium is supposed to be tougher than gold (I thought so anyway)

I kinda wonder what "scratches easily" really means. According to this, rhodium is supposed to be brighter and harder than gold and is more corrosion/environmental resistant, so one would assume it'd be MORE difficult to scratch, rather than less.

It does look like the plating process is more difficult, because you have to use nickel plate over silver.

Anyhow, I did a bit of checking. Looks like rhodium is currently around $1000 per ounce and gold is $1650, although a 12-year average for rhodium is $3000 compared to gold's $1900. There's mention that Russia's one of the biggest providers of rhodium, so you might have your Chinese connection there.