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 Is this the largest collection of 1920/1930′s C Melody sax necks ever photographed ?

So anyway, one night, probably after a relaxing glass of scrumpy – oh those carefree pre-diet days – I had this great idea to collect all the necks from the nineteen odd C Melody saxophones that sit there patiently waiting to be brought back to life (nineteen or so, obviously not counting the modern Aquilasax with its two necks…).  The first part of checking them out is to try and play the blinkin’ things, and without a corked neck it’s a hindrance (some/most have remnants of 1920′s cork still clinging on for dear life) so the thought of a mass neck-corking session seemed more productive than the normal masking/insulation/gaffer/ptfe tape – or folded over till receipt – temporary solution which can last for weeks/months/years if done well.

(Update) Just found another C neck (phew!) – I’d taken the nickel plated Conn neck out to be photographed against modern nickel plate, for a SoTW topic, so I’ll give the neck gnome a little slack on that one…

Thanks to milandro for putting up this saxontheweb link to a YouTube Video of the Chateauguay Tenors playing alto, c-melody, and tenor saxes, in an epic topic started by Captain Beeflat, a.k.a. Lewis – Snobbery associated with the C Melody.   It’s quite unusual to so easily be able to compare the sound of a Conn C-Melody with a Buescher C-Melody, albeit in the hands of two slightly different style players – Al Mclean and Cameron Wallis. 

Had initially been a post about the Conn C-Mel, but these sharp old eyes spotted that when the guy on the left stops playing his Conn C-Mel to switch to tenor (on which he has a remarkably similar style) – at around 2:15 the more aggressive alto player on the right switches to what looks suspiciously like a Buescher C-Mel. It’s too small to be a tenor – and you can occasionally glimpse the Buescher ‘man in the moon’ neck brace if you’ve quick reactions.

TWO C-Melody saxes in one clip, whatever next ?

Can’t quite make out the mouthpieces yet, the Buescher seems to have a traditional ‘stock’ shape – could they be originals ?

Always been a source of amusement to me that the Conn C hangs comfortably low like a tenor – and usually sounds more like an alto – but all the rest of the C’s can lean more towards a tenor’ish sound (choosing my words carefully here… ) but have an ‘up and close’ playing position that really only suits alto players in a neck brace 

Maybe that’s why most other C’s play more aggressively than the Conn’s -  because of the discomfort and pain ? C’est la vie !

( with extracts from my saxontheweb comments )

During this period of relative inactivity, I’ve taken the opportunity to migrate my ‘cmelodysax.co.uk’ website to a new primary domain name – ‘ csax.net ‘ Time to reflect that the C Saxophone is capable of being part of the modern world, and not just the “C Melody” sax of the 20′s. There’s also a slight ‘play on words’ as I live on the Dorset / Jurassic coast, ‘C Sax’ sounds like ‘Sea Sax’ – well, I like it !

The old cmelodysax.co.uk address will still point to the new csax.net website, so any existing links you have to my website should still work, and there will also be times when cmelodysax.co.uk will still show in the browser address bar – due to the fact that some of the existing databases like the blog are tied to the old name – but once I nail all the links down it should be showing as csax.net most of the time, especially out on the website pages. I may, in time, migrate the blog to a newer – less cluttered – theme, which will then let me fully change that to csax.net as well, unless I discover a nifty way to techno-fudge it in the meantime.

With all this comes a new (easy to remember) email address, al@csax.net – and, when I’m away from the PC, I have a phone and a wi-fi PDA which both handle emails, so I can pick up emails to the new address on those as well. Naturally, all of the old email addresses will still work for the forseeable future, just like the old links…

And, having a Spring-clean in Autumn, two old linked url/domain’s ( ‘cmelody.co.uk’, and ‘c-melody.co.uk’ ) will not be renewed next year, so in the very unlikely event that anyone uses those, please change over to ‘csax.net’. If anyone ever uses Windows Live Messenger etc., I’ve forsaken my old ‘dorsetdriftwood’ and ‘cmelodysax’ identities for csax@live.co.uk as well – yet more stuff to reconfigure (keeping those grey cells busy, sigh…)

The new name will also herald the move to a wider range of topics here, as – to be honest – there are many more interesting things in life than just saxophones, lovely as they are… Always open to put up topics on behalf of any readers, just email me with details on the links above.

Alan

So, what better way of kick-starting the blog on this sunny first day of September ?

I guess this playing position may be fine for some smooth-talking, slick-haired 20’s lounge-lizard sax player, but can I possibly see myself being comfortable with that for an evenings playing ?  Nah…  Goodness knows what sort of strain his right elbow is being subjected to, let alone his forward jutting neck…

Thanks to Dan ‘soybean’ Sawyer for sending me the picture, and for his comment “You can see the apparent akwardness of balancing the horn while standing. The strap ring on most C-mels must have been placed for sitting position.”

‘Course, there might just be another reason.  The relatively low output of the C-Mel, mostly down to the old mouthpieces that came as standard, might need the sax bell pointing either at the pianist (so she could hear him) or at granny sitting in the corner…  Our sound these days mostly seems to go out and up  – the sax bell is ideally angled for a microphone just above the bell – whereas this position is competing with the old trumpet, trombone and clarinet players stance’s, where the sound was out and (mostly) horizontal, straight towards the audience for purely acoustic playing.

It’’d be adding insult to injury to have the already muted C-Mel sound bouncing around the ceiling (as often does a lot of ours…)   Maybe that’s also why a lot of older sax players automatically leant forwards when they played a solo, to point the bell more towards the audience ?

Whatever happened to April – seemed to have slipped by at breakneck speed without a single new post.   So – just as a quick “catch-up”, here’s a few things that have changed, although I’ll probably expand on them in future posts.

My tenor Lawton 8*BB is back with me from its holiday in New Jersey (wish I’d gone there with it ), and is now in the fine company of an 8*B and an ebonite 8BB – click/hover here for a picture of them all – both recently acquired from cyber friends – many thanks to Jon and Andrew for very sensible prices.  I’ve been checking them all out on my old $77 Martin stencil tenor, and I very much suspect that the Lawton 8BB ebonite will end up on the Aquilasax bare-brass C, deposing the current Couf J10*S.  The brass 8*B will probably become the main tenor piece, leaving the 8*BB either free for re-sale or as an emergency paint-stripper…

All this ‘tenoring’ has raised my tenor hackles, and nice as my old Martin tenor is, I ‘ve just won a new Steve Goodson (stop that hissing…) Orpheo burnished brass tenor sax for a BIN offer of just $500 (that’s a total delivered cost, including shipping and UK VAT/duty, of less than 500 quid for a well equipped piece of kit.  They are around eleven hundred pounds/quid (incl. shipping)  if you buy them in the UK from Goodson’s UK outlet.   All it needs now is for Noteworthy Musical to invoice me via Paypal, so that I can actually pay – but I guess things move slowly in Texas ? 

That’s the tenor, on the left – looks wierd, that high-G rod going all the way up the back, past the knuckle-duster…  Here is some more info about the Orpheo tenor – and a Youtube video – featuring Valdemort himself, with all the playing done by Derek Nash, from the UK….

What else ?  Well, both my alto and tenor Tone Edge Links have gone to a very nice man in Southampton – thanks Roger.  Plus I’ve been checking out ways of renovating those old ebonite mouthpieces – I can ‘almost’ get them to taste like new again !   And – this is partly why the posting hiatus – I’ve finally bitten the bullet and am clearing out all the junk from my house.  Can’t live like  Steptoe  any more.  So what I can’t sell on the website will go by eBay – although I’m amazed that (if you include Paypal fees) I can now look forward to losing 15% of the selling price as commission – or to the tip…  Guess there’s no eBay/Paypal recession !

The C’s haven’t been neglected, still playing the Conn PanAm C-Sop and the bare-brass Aquilasax C.   Anyway, hello again, and I look forward to posting a new topic at least every few days – watch this space.  If I owe anyone an email response, apologies, they’ve been coming thick and fast – I’m wading thro’ those (as fast as I can go) as well – if you’re really desperate for a response, send it again so that it’s at the top of the pile…

Not wishing to steal one of Gandalfe’s posts (click here for his blog) or his thunder – but having examined the instrument, I have concluded that from the overall dimensions, and the fact that the bottom leg of the ‘bell B’ guard is well above the joint, that this is in fact a  giant C-Melody sax…

Such taste, no other sax would do for such a prestigious display ! I’d hate to have to repad that one…  Although it’s hinted that it’s a “double e-flat contrabass sax” – I recon from the date (1924) and overall build, it’s a “C-Sub-Contra-Melody“

The young lady’s legs (not that I was staring…) do look decidedly two dimensional, and she’s going to need a longer neck strap . I think she is somewhat ‘staged’- I can’t imagine anyone going on tip-toe on top of a pair of steps that high – think what ‘Health & Safety’ and ‘The Nanny State’ would have to say about that in 2009.

That’s made my day, the biggest C-Melody in the world. Any idea of shipping costs to the UK ?  Thanks to Gandalfe, and Terry Hummer, wonderful find – not, as you’d expect, from a musical paper, but from Popular Mechanics – June 1924.

Came across this on YouTube.  Don’t know who the player is, seems like it’s a Lyon & Healy C-Melody, probably stencilled by Martin – the video makes it hard to identify, but I think I got a glimpse of a Martin’ish bow fin, and the bell B tone-hole looks a bit bevelled.  Beautifully solid sound !  Mouthpiece looks to be relatively modern, probably tenor, playing starts about 30 seconds in.

Thanks, randynkaisy – whoever you are…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvx4gfr3TIg

Hopefully I’ll be soon putting up some decent sound samples (rather than quick sound-bytes) on the bare-brass Aquilasax C, seen here sharing a chair with my early 30′s Martin C, and my solitary Bb tenor, a Melody Master Martin stencil, probably from the mid-30′s -  a bit of a ‘diamond in the rough…’

The Bb tenor is also getting a bit of attention lately, I missed playing tenor !   I could almost see alto getting squeezed out of the current favourites list.  Makes good sense, as my C & Bb soprano’s share the same mouthpieces and reeds, and the Bb and C tenors do likewise.

Alto has always been a rewarding sax to play in the past, but (for me) always needs more work to keep up ‘to a good standard’ than any of the others, so, unless I really concentrate on playing alto  – usually to the detriment of the other saxes – it can also at times be a frustrating instrument.  At the moment the Aquilasax C, with the alto style neck, nicely compliments the Bb tenor, and (as I’ve said before) conveniently shares reeds and mouthpieces with it.

Seems that I’m moving away from regarding the C-Mel as a small tenor, conveniently in C, to actually using the Aquilasax as a gutsy C-alto.  Hmmmm, strange turn of events, I’ll just keep playing and see how it all turns out…

So there I was, wondering what had happened to January and most of February ?  I’ve now got so many things on my mental 2009 ‘to-do’ list that my brain has overflowed, so I guess I’d better hustle before March goes the same way…

First essential, thanks to rapidly diminishing returns on savings, and horrendously battered private pension fund, courtesy of the world’s relentlessly spiraling financial markets, is to raise some dosh pretty sharpish. (never thought I’d be glad that my 65′th birthday – and therefore state pension – is only three and a bit years away…)

So, the last week has been spent looking at what instruments I can sell, whilst still obviously retaining more than enough to keep me happy, and taking a few pictures to update the saxes-for-sale page – and of course for the unavoidable eBay listings.   In the course of these feverish activities I came across a lacquered King C-Melody that I’d bought because I really liked the look of it.  Click on the picture (on the right) for loads more pictures !

I’ve always been a sucker for dark vintage lacquer, but this particular horn has such a mix of colours, rubbed (as it is) to bare brass on the neck and most of the key faces.  Very unlike the quite uniform dark bronze of my favourite Martin C-Melody, which obviously isn’t going.  The updating is far from finished, probably never will be, but the lacquer King is one saxophone that I sincerely hope no-one will ever be interested in buying.  If it plays as great as it looks – well…

As you can see by the picture, the bare-brass Aquilasax C  has arrived, and is in use…  I was so keen to try the sax out (about ten seconds after it had arrived, fastest unpack ever) but the new ‘tenor’ style C neck had a slight mechanical problem, so I impatiently tried it with the ‘alto’ style neck that was also in the case.  Click on the picture for a better view of the sax.

But (surprise, surprise…) when I went back to the tenor neck, having later easily rectified the problem, I found that the alto neck suited me so much better.  Very little appreciable difference in sound quality and blowing characteristics between them, so it’s really all down to comfort and ‘feel’. 

You might remember back-away when I commented that the new Aquilasax C ‘tenor’ neck was shorter than the standard C-Mel ‘tenor’ neck – because the body tube had to be lengthened to accommodate the high F#, so the neck was then proportionally shortened to maintain the same overall ‘tube’ length ?

Well, so it is with the new Aquilasax C ‘alto’ style neck – it’s considerably shorter than the original 20′s Conn C-Mel straight neck, in fact only about an inch longer than a standard Eb alto neck, and with none of the microtuner gubbins that also seemed to affect harmonics.  So, using the new C straight/alto neck  doesn’t appreciably push the sax ‘out and away’ – the real hate I had with the 20′s straight/alto-neck Conn C’s, having quite short arms !  Instead, on the Aquilasax C, it drops the sax down from a normal C ‘close and high’, to a ‘close and lower’ position – quite tenor’ish, despite looking like an alto on steroids, still with all the keys in easy reach, plus the neck doesn’t get in the way when reading music – and it’s so comfortable – as you can see, nothing is strained…  (except maybe the listening ears )

The sling can now also be appreciably looser/lower, and can usefully be slipped on/off the neck without disturbing the setting.  Going back again to the Aquilasax C tenor style neck re-confirmed all my initial findings, so I sharply returned it to the case and went back to the alto-style neck.  I’m probably the last person to readily admit this, but (certainly at this moment in time) I actually prefer playing with the Aquilasax C ‘alto’ neck.  How strange, I really didn’t expect that !   More observations later, as I get to know the sax…  Thanks Steve, much as I like my original lacquer C – I just love this new bare-brass one !