Saxophone Reviews
RECOMMENDATIONS
NEW!
There is now a CafeSaxophone review section where you can read customer reviews of saxophones, mouthpieces and vsaxophone accessiries, or write your own reviews
How to find a good saxophone review?
If you do a Google search for "Saxophone Reviews", many of the pages you find will not be very useful, some "reviews" are just adverstisements or promotional material disguised as saxophone reviews. The key elements that a saxophone review should include are tone (not just the basic sound but also consistency of tone throughout the range), intonation, ease of blowing, ease of fingering, ease of maintenance, build quality and cosmetics.
Currently I am only including a few "mini reviews", but over the next few weeks or months I am hoping to post some reviews and comparisons of many different saxophones, please watch the site carefully or join the forum for details.
P.Mauriat
I have tried many of these before and found that they are really very good horns, equal to or better than any Selmer! At last year’s show I was very impressed with the 66RUL tenor, I tried it again and although it had that great big fat sound I remembered, the response did not seem to be as good as the 76NS (or the Inderbinen). I mentioned this to Mr Hsieh, the owner of P.Mauriat, who suggested I try a Magnum neck on the 66RUL. What an amazing difference, suddenly the whole instrument came alive and all the response (including great altissimo) of the 76NS was now there on the 66RUL.
Rampone & Cazzani
Coming soon...
Inderbinen
Probably the most expensive saxophone on the market, I had always been a bit sceptical as to whether this could really be worth what it costs. I had assumed anyone mad enough to part with that amount of money for a horn they can’t actually play in advance is only thinking of it as a status symbol. I first had the chance to play one at the Frankfurt Musikmesse exhibition last year, but only after three days of playing so many other horns my brain was completely "saxophoned out". I really liked it then and was determined to try them again this year when I was feeling a bit less tired.
The first thing you notice is the finish. It is a kind of irregular matt brown colour, which I initially thought was a special kind of distressed lacquer finish that you often see these days, but it is actually bare brass that acquires the patina from a heating process, sort of a baked saxophone. This looks quite striking against the keywork which is mostly standard shiny lacquered keywork from Yamaha. The body itself is completely hand made in Switzerland.
This year at the exhibition I had the chance to try them quite extensively. On most saxophones extra harmonics are added to the tone as you blow louder, some of which are not quite in tune. With the Inderbinen, this does’nt seem to be the case and this in itself seems to allow you to play with better tuning overall, even at extremes of the dynamic range. For some people this could be a disadvantage if you are relying on a few imperfections or distortions on loud notes to add "character". But, and this is the important thing to me, provided you are able to add that character yourself, you have a horn which is much more versatile. So I would say this is not a horn for beginners because although it’s incredibly easy to play, it does not "play itself" if what you want is the ultimate in expression, but, unlike any other horn, that is exactly what it can give you, provided you have what it takes to drive it.
I would have bought it on the spot if there was not an 18 month waiting list.