Boarding House Food or Fast Food?

Boarding House Food or Fast Food?
This is an apt comparison I personally make between modern Saxophones and older vintage instruments. While there are some great modern Saxophones that certainly play more “in tune” and feel better than their earlier counterparts, my preference is for older horns and I can sum up my reasons in two words – flexibility and tone. I believe these two factors become more important the longer one pursues the Sax. Older instruments tend to have larger bores than their modern counterparts with wider intervals. For the inexperienced player, this makes the older instrument harder to “play in tune” easily but for the experienced player, it represents the unique feature of the Saxophone to be able to “bend” the notes and create nuances and to me, there is no comparison in tone. A good way to describe these differences is to state that “old Saxophones are two thirds art and one-third science.” They are made with more handwork and therefore less consistency than newer Saxophones that can be described as “One-third art and two-thirds science.” As one older Saxophonist once said: “Old Saxophones are like boarding house food. You may get a gourmet meal or bad food but modern Saxophones are like fast food. You may not get bad food but you sure won’t get a gourmet meal.”

This also applies to some extent to clarinets. The great older "large bore" clarinets of the 1930s and 1940s have little resistance and great tone and projection. While these lack the easy intonation and control of modern professional clarinets, which make these less likely to be chosen by school musician, they more than make up for this in what a skilled musician can do with them. If you don't believe listen to Goodman, Shaw, or the other greats of that era.  ~ Charles