Tech/maintenance SHWoodwind Updates

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I do know from working on them that the higher octave vent on the body instead of the neck is less prone to getting knocked out of adjustment or even broken in some cases. The necks without an octave key are also less expensive (when you can find them).
 
Stephen Howard said:
I can't find any examples with this design of octave key fitted, and I would have said that perhaps they were using up what remained of the Comm.III stocks in store - but the two models ran concurrently for quite some time. Bit of a puzzle.
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Is ist the convex mop thumbrest on The Martin Magna vs the ordinary The Martin thumbrest? I think the Magna is better. All Magna I've seen have the convex lh thumbrest. But you can never be sure. The late The Martin (not Magna) had "grub screw" on the neck and some kind of adjustable bumpers. And there was not adjustable rh thumbrest. I don't don't know why. Maybe the wanted to get rid of old inventory before they sold "The Martin" to Leblanc? I found a late a late The Martin with "grub scew", no adjustable rh thumrest and felt bumpers. And to pimp a model that is going out of production is also a common way in the manufactoring business. You earn most of the money in the phase 3. The profit is never in phase 1. Photo Gallery :: SaxPics.com
 
"The tenor version is identical to its Comm.III counterpart - but it's said that the crook is slightly longer on the Magna, which points to Martin doing a spot of tweaking with the tuning."

The diffence between is Magna and the ordinary Comm III neck is insignificant. But if the difference in length between a Magna neck and a HC Comm neck is c 25 mm. The Martin necks were one of the best necks in those days. Thick brass and the taper was also important. The taper stayed round which was not the case on other saxes from this era. This is important for the intonation/pitch. How much should a octave key on the neck open? My Magna neck is not open so mcuh.
View: https://youtu.be/nWucnioGsbs
 
The octave mech is a slightly flawed design in that the ratio of movement between the two octave key cups is too different. It's no big deal if you're using a fairly standard mouthpiece - but when using something rather more esoteric you could find that things get a bit hissy around the top A.
There are ways around it, but they both involve making the action less responsive.

By far the biggest mistake made on these horns is to fit a squishy buffer beneath the octave touchpiece. The key needs to go down a certain amount - and no more, even under excessive thumb pressure. A dead stop, in other words.
 
"I guess the BIG question is "Does it sound any different to the Committee III??" - and the answer to that is "No, not really". "

You're right there is just small differences between a well set-up Magna and a Comm III. I guess new and modern are installed on the Comm III: The Magna model came with "Tone Boosters" on the pads. Selmers domed resonators on mkVI inspired Martin to install Tone Boosters on the Magna. The Comm III had a plain pad with just a rivet. I think that makes a differnce as well. I' m going to upload samples with a Comm III with no resonators and a Magna with resonoters. If I just can have the clip's into my computer. Original Magna Tone Booster pad from 1959
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magnaputor.JPG

magnaresonatore.jpg
 
You'll always find a difference between a horn that sports reflectors on its pads and the same horn that doesn't - though for the most part the difference between horns with different reflectors fitted is going to be minimal.
For purely aesthetic reasons I tend to favour flat reflectors on the Martin (and indeed, most vintage horns).
 
Stephen Howard said:
It's review time - and I know a few of you have been waiting for this one!
It's the Hanson LX tenor - touted as being the most Mark Sixey copy yet made of the Selmer MkVI.
We shall see...

Hanson LX (60) tenor sax review

A workbench review of the Hason LX (60) tenor saxophone
www.shwoodwind.co.uk

View attachment 14602
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That was a very good read, especially the forensic observations

On playability you say, "Now, if you picked this horn up and blew it on its own I think you'd be pleasantly surprised by it ". Exactly what I thought when I tried one
 
Ivan said:
That was a very good read, especially the forensic observations

On playability you say, "Now, if you picked this horn up and blew it on its own I think you'd be pleasantly surprised by it ". Exactly what I thought when I tried one
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interesting stuff, thanks Stephen. Was thinking of part ex-ing my ST8 for an LX once the free servicing runs out on it, if they're still offering the full price part exchange deal by then.
 
I swapped my ST8 for an LX in 2017 I think, so it will have been a ‘newer’ one. Whilst I liked the fact it was so much lighter than my ST8 and I did like the sound of it, I had some annoying issues with it.

The free service option is great, and I have used it in the past, but the reality is a whole day travelling up to Yorkshire and back.

I had repeated problems with severe sticking issues with the G# key - much more than usual and had a local tech sort it out, only to come back very quickly.

I kept getting regulation issues with slow switching between some notes.

I eventually forked out £150 for a fully dismantled clean and service. A number of leaks were addressed.

I enjoyed playing it but I was finding it unreliable to the point it was putting me off playing. One of my exam pieces had a lot of G# accidentals and it was just too annoying.

I now have a secondhand Yanagisawa T992.
 
Tenor Viol said:
I swapped my ST8 for an LX in 2017 I think, so it will have been a ‘newer’ one. Whilst I liked the fact it was so much lighter than my ST8 and I did like the sound of it, I had some annoying issues with it.
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I think that's the nub of the review. It's a very capable horn - and at its price-point it really doesn't have any competition in terms of tone (at least that I've seen and played) - but it really needs more time spent on it during the assembly process. And not that much more. It's so much easier to deal with the niggles as you put the thing together than it is to 'retro-fix' them.
Once sorted there's no reason the horn should be any more or less reliable than a decent MkVI in good shape.
 
Stephen Howard said:
I think that's the nub of the review. It's a very capable horn - and at its price-point it really doesn't have any competition in terms of tone (at least that I've seen and played) - but it really needs more time spent on it during the assembly process. And not that much more. It's so much easier to deal with the niggles as you put the thing together than it is to 'retro-fix' them.
Once sorted there's no reason the horn should be any more or less reliable than a decent MkVI in good shape.
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In the end I got frustrated with the misbehaviour. My teacher loved the sound of it.
 
Finally got my LX tenor this week from Alistair Hanson. Only a few hours play thus far but so far so good. From a playability standpoint its even helping me get a better handle on Clarence Clemmons solo on Born to Run and some of the tricky stuff in Living On a Prayer. Some of the little riffs in gentle stuff such as Just the Way You are also improving on my previous efforts... .. And the sax is so good looking in the Black finish that I'm less concerned about people looking at my ugly mug when I'm busking!
 
It's been quite a while since I had time to do any updates - four months to the date, to be precise (I've been so busy) - but I just had to down tools and do a review of this horn.
It's the Thomann Low Jazz low Bb baritone. And it's, well...go see...

Thomann Low Jazz baritone sax review

A workbench review of the Thomann Low Jazz baritone saxophone
www.shwoodwind.co.uk

shwwimg_thomann_lowjazz_bari_bell small.webp
 
Steve - I wonder if you have drawn a conclusion about the "hanson_lx_tenor" as far as country of origin (if I missed this, please excuse, I have to get to 5 different pressing things that won't be resolved for weeks, even if I stay on them every second).

The rod screw issue you detailed (the normal vs weird threads segment) and pillar fit parts are very handy for explaining to people the difference between Taiwan vs PRC manufacturing. I would guess that what happened with the freaky rodscrew is that there was some type of binding or insertion (e.g. screw passing a pillar hole) issue during assembly and the assembly tech solved the problem in the way that you see in the now-bizarre screw. I would expect to see this on some PRC products, but never on any of the contemporary offerings from Taiwan majors.

I'm not trying to out the manufacturing of the product, just to underline something re PRC vs Taiwan that often takes a lot of explaining and that segment of your review is very handy for illuminating it. You would likely never know or suspect that there was anything weird going on with that rodscrew, "behind the veil," by playing. But you will see a lot of weird, non-traditional (to saxophone or woodwind manufacturing) solutions to assembly issues that will come up in less fully mechanized assembly lines on PRC saxophones. Not so much on established majors (Germany, France, Japan) or Taiwan.

I have seen some really funny/bizarre things on saxophones from the factory for the Crescent. If the horns went out, they were not affecting performance in any meaningful way, but they are still on some of the horns out there. One example is a bizarre way of setting up springs that suddenly showed up on all the saxophones in one shipment after I complimented the assembly of one horn I received in particular. They apparently listened to me and asked themselves "what is different about this one?" and thought a single freaky spring anomaly -- totally unrelated to the overall better quality of assembly -- was probably responsible for my positive feedback.

I would not be surprised if this came to your bench via BWs, back in the day (a bizarre spring-crimping practice, specifically).
 
I haven't come to any conclusions - but the crimped rod/hinge screw head showed up on that Thomann bari...which has been confirmed as having been made in Taiwan.

I don't recall any spring-related oddities on the BWs...aside from the common practice of fitting undersized springs.
 

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