Yes, but it can be useful to know what we mean when we say a dark, mellow, bright .... sax. If a player wants a big bore and the sound it produce then he/she needs a A.Sax .... .
As a part of our research in sound quality, we are running a project jointly with a saxophone manufacturer. The aim of the project is to devise methods for designing product sound. Since musical instruments are designed specifically to produce a desired sound, they are excellent examples to use t...
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What we're trying to say here is that "large bore" and "small bore": a) aren't definable by a single number, because the saxophone is a CONE; b) do not necessarily correlate to what you think they correlate to.
Let's consider some saxophones of varying hypothetical design. Let's also assume, and it's a big assumption, that for all of these the tone holes are properly located to have an in-tune scale at A=440, with a mouthpiece of average internal volume.
#1 is the totally average saxophone of 2025. The ID at any position down its length is the average of saxophones made today.
#2 starts with a smaller bore at the neck aperture, but the cone has a steeper angle, so the ID is larger than #1 from about halfway down.
#3 starts with a larger bore at the neck aperture, but the cone has a shallower angle, so the ID is smaller than #1 from about halfway down.
#4 starts with a larger neck aperture and has the same cone angle as #1, so its ID is larger all the way down.
#5 is the converse of that; starts with a smaller neck aperture and has the same cone angle as #1, so its ID is smaller all the way down.
#6 ~ #894 are additional variants that need not be explored here.
Now, for those of you who like to issue pronouncements about "large bore" versus "Small bore" saxophones:
OK, it seems pretty clear that #4 could be honestly called "large" and #5 could honestly be called "small"; but what about #2 and #3? They have portions of their length with larger than average ID and portions with smaller than average ID.
Next question: what is your expectation of the playing and tonal qualities of saxophones #2 ~ #5? What is the basis for your statement? If you have played a "large bore" horn and concluded that its playing qualities were the result of it being a "large bore horn", did you have MEASUREMENTS to determine whether it was a #2, #3, or #4 type? Did you have ANY measurements at all, or was it just that someone told you it was a large bore horn, because they heard it from someone who heard it from someone who heard it...
Or was the OUTER DIAMETER of the tenon larger, which means NOTHING to the ID, as the wall thickness of the tenon is chosen by the designer for purely mechanical reasons.
Lastly, I invite anyone interested in this discussion to view Marten Postma's actual data. Note that the deviations from cone shape in bells, bows, and necks generally far exceed horn-to-horn differences in the taper of the main body section. Those deviations are mainly due to the requirements of manufacturing. How do you account for their effects (especially in the neck which affects all notes on the instrument) when you declare this horn a "large bore" one and that horn a "small bore" one?
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