I just find it odd that whilst premium horns never felt cheap, they all felt attainable 20/30 years ago.
Pretty much every clarinet player at a Conservatoire would have turned up with an R13, 10C or 1010 in the ‘80’s; I wonder if that is changing.
The 80s, of course, were 40 years ago, not 20/30.
Last time this came up I had a little look at the changing prices, in real terms once inflation is factored in. Selmer saxes have indeed increased in real terms, even when you factor in that you now get a case and mouthpiece included (incredibly, the standard price of a Selmer sax didn't used to include a case!). Yamaha and Yanagisawa are very similar in real terms to what they were a few decades ago.
Selmer, pretty uniquely, seem to be jacking their prices ever higher. Normally in economics, as price increases, demand decreases. Selmer seem to be gambling that the decline in demand will be proportionately less than the increase in price, increasing their profits. They may even have a belief that their products have a reverse elasticity of demand, where demand actually increases as price increases, as wealthy aspirational buyers are attracted to what they regard as the 'best' in the market. Personally I think this is tosh, as whenever I have played Selmers, I've found them to be good but not noticably preferable to Yanagisawa or higher end Yamahas.
Of course, at the other end of the market, saxes are radically cheaper than they were when I started playing in 1980. A playable modern student sax is vastly cheaper than the student saxes on the market when I was in my teens, and they would absolutely blow the student saxes of that era out of the water in terms of playability. That has hugely democratised playing music.
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