any other people with feedback ?
I bought the silver with gold key-work version of the Jericho J6 Mark II Alto on June 6th this year and played it every day until August 27th when I replaced it with a Bauhaus Walstein M2 in dark lacquer. My experience of choosing the replacement can be seen here if you are interested:
Hi all. Played brass (euphoniium -> trombone -> trumpet -> cornet) for 50 years but suddenly got the urge to play saxophone when I retired from a career in science. Now the proud owner of a pair of Bauhaus M2s: silver tenor and dark lacquer alto; and with a whole 10 weeks playing experience...
cafesaxophone.com
I didn't replace the Jericho because it was a poor saxophone - it isn't.
After playing a range of brass instruments for 50 years I was not at all sure whether the saxophone was going to work for me so I read the reviews and bought a fairly cheap but well thought of student horn. It seemed like a better choice than an ebay special of dubious pedigree or a rather expensive student horn from Yamaha etc. However, after a couple of weeks it was obvious that I was hooked and it was only going to be a matter of time before I would be tempted by pro level instruments
I decided that I really fancied a tenor and went for a Bauhaus Walstein M2 silver which is fantastic to look at and sounds superb even with me blowing into it. I continued to work on the Jericho and made good progress but after playing it for a couple of months I decided that I wanted to make the most of the time I have left in this life to play saxophone and treated myself to another BW M2.
Based on my experience - all 10 weeks of it - the Jericho offers fantastic value for money and is a great choice for someone learning to play alto, as a backup horn or simply for a player on a tight budget.
It took me a couple of days to produce a decent sound but I now know that most of that was because of poor reed placement and the rather poor quality mouthpiece. In his review of the Jericho, Steve Howard suggests replacing it with a Yamaha 4c which I did and things got better very quickly. Once I realised that the reeds which came with the Jericho were also pretty poor quality (irregular thickness, warped grain, unbalanced cut) and replaced them...... I really started to improve!
Steve Howard and Pete Thomas have said that it has the free blowing characteristics of a Yamaha and having tried a couple of Yamaha 62s when choosing my new alto, I can see what they mean. It speaks very easily and has some of the clean precision which seems to be the key attraction of the YAS62.
The build quality is remarkably good for a student horn - I looked at some other student models last week, at about the same price point, which were quite crude by comparison - with very tight key-work and a nice action although there are a few rough points on a few of the screws as mentioned elsewhere in this thread. My only complaint was that the table and palm keys were set rather hard. I contacted my local repairer guy and asked if he could reduce the tension a bit but when I explained it was a Chinese student model I got the usual sucked-teeth sound and was told that you just can't adjust them cos they are cr..! As I know the guy from my brass playing days I took it round to his repair shop anyway and he, reluctantly, admitted that it was a) very well built and b) had a very nice action. He tweaked the table key springs and adjusted the octave key mechanism which, although it worked reasonably well, felt a bit sloppy and hesitated when moving between the crook and body octave keys. After he had made the adjustments it felt really good and I can honestly say that I tried several £1000 plus horns last week which were no better under the fingers and not much better to blow!
After 10 weeks, I can play from bottom Bb to D above the staff with a a steady tone, reasonable intonation and without any real strain. I guess that my experience playing brass to semi-pro level has helped in terms of air support and embouchure BUT.... I don't think I would have made that progress without the horn being pretty easy to play!
If I were to compare it with my new Bauhaus Walstein M2 (which, in my humble opinion, blew away every other horn I tried including Yamaha 62s and an Antigua Pro One):
The Jericho is almost as easy to blow as the BW but the sound is slightly less complex. This is not in itself a bad thing but I just feel that the BW has a bit more potential for me to grow in to. I find it easy to play over my 2 octave range on the Jericho but there is a little more variation in the quality of sound with the lower range being very full and the top end just a little thin. It is not a big difference but I find it hard to select and adjust a reed to give excellent sound at both the top end and the low end of the Jericho whereas it is easy to do so on the BW. To my ears (and to those of my electronic tuner) both horns give pretty good intonation over the whole range without me having to do very much to consciously adjust the pitch.
If the Jericho had been placed in the mix of £1500 - £2000 horns I spent the afternoon testing last week, it would not have stood out as being a £300 student instrument and, more tellingly, it would not have been in last place!
My advice is probably worth exactly what you are paying me for it (i.e. zilch) based as it is on just 3 months sax playing BUT, I will be keeping the Jericho as a spare and will probably take it out and play it just for fun from time to time. I will certainly take it with me when I travel as I will worry less about a £300 horn getting stolen or lost than I would the £1800 BW.
It was a very nice horn straight out of the box (excellent service from the suppliers by the way) and even better after a £30 tweak.
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