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…








