APPENDIX


projects to be investigated

intonation

I would like to encourage everyone to perform intonation measurements on his own instrument. It's a tedious job that nevertheless brings undeniably interesting results. It is maybe the only kind of measurements that will enhance your musicianship. Do it for yourself but keep me informed!

bore profiles

Of the newer instruments, I did not include all measurements I have. I found that there is little interesting variation there, especially S, A & T. You could conclude that we've reached a kind of end point in bore profiles: a straight cone for the body and one or two different types for the neck. I feel this holds true for the Sax-jr/Selmer line and their descendants like the japanese. I included the newer instruments mainly to demonstrate that. The american way seems to show some wider variation relative to the european, but unfortunately has no descendants.

All the more interesting is how we got there. I was very much surprised to find that both Buffet Crampon and Feuillet already in 1870s built sopranos on the basis of quite a straight cone. What happened exactly between Sax's first generation of instruments and the turn of the century? From this point of view I would be very much interested in more instruments from the Parisian workshops of the period up to, say, 1930: Gautrot, Lefèvre, Thibouville, Couesnon, Ass. générale des Ouvriers Réunis. In the 20th century Couesnon is an interesting descendant of the the Association and thereby of Feuillet. Pierret, SML and Lyrist are all saxophone specialists who made interesting instruments.
The american line I know only from around the 20s and later on. But here too: how we got there is quite interesting as the american instruments from that period are already quite 'modern' compared to the french instruments from around 1890, which were their models. Such historical questions ask for all the nice specimens I can possibly lay my hands on...

confirmation, tolerancies

Not included so far in my pages are second sets of measurements on other specimens of the same instruments for comparison, confirmation and tolerancies, although occasionally I do have such second sets. More of these could be interesting.


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