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Trafford Tenor Sax made in East Germany by B&S - it's a Weltklang stencil folks...
From what I can find out, Trafford saxes were stencils imported by Barratts music shop on Oxford Road, Manchester in the 1970's. I'm told they were imported as sets of parts (presumably to reduce import duty) and assembled in Old Trafford, hence the name. Back in those days eastern Europe was the only place to source cheap stencil instruments, the Chinese were yet to come up with a decent alternative
This particular instrument was my first ever sax, as you can see by the photos, the previous owner(s) had a lot of use out of it, there's some scuffing and lacquer wear, a few minor dings in the bow, some posts and keyguard's have been resoldered and the pads are getting old and leaky, the neck cork needs replacing.. but it plays.. if you squeeze the lower keys down hard enough you can reach low Bb.
The action is typically heavy, this wouldn't win any speed contests, but its not been serviced in 20 years and 12 of those years have been spent sitting in the case since I moved over to alto.
It's solidly built, you got plenty of brass for your money back then, the nickel plated keywork is pretty simple compared with modern designs
tonally, it's a pretty raunchy sounding beast, I've compared it to a Keilwerth SXR90 - my mate brought his round to my house several years ago and after all the admiring noises had died down, I jokingly hauled this out to see the difference. To our surprise it sounded pretty similar, although the Keilwerth is of course a far better instrument.
Since I have to put a price on this thing, I'll say £95 - which is about half of what I paid for it, but you could get a Chinese tenor for £200 odd these days. 5% donation to Pete's Charity.
I'm not certain how much it'd cost to send it via courier - over £20, I'd guess, so local pick up here in Leicester might be preferable..
I'm open to offers or trades for any interesting or unusual items
here's some pictures -
there's a lot more pics here - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nrozhyfiye89c0q/wKkV3nBEJc
From what I can find out, Trafford saxes were stencils imported by Barratts music shop on Oxford Road, Manchester in the 1970's. I'm told they were imported as sets of parts (presumably to reduce import duty) and assembled in Old Trafford, hence the name. Back in those days eastern Europe was the only place to source cheap stencil instruments, the Chinese were yet to come up with a decent alternative
This particular instrument was my first ever sax, as you can see by the photos, the previous owner(s) had a lot of use out of it, there's some scuffing and lacquer wear, a few minor dings in the bow, some posts and keyguard's have been resoldered and the pads are getting old and leaky, the neck cork needs replacing.. but it plays.. if you squeeze the lower keys down hard enough you can reach low Bb.
The action is typically heavy, this wouldn't win any speed contests, but its not been serviced in 20 years and 12 of those years have been spent sitting in the case since I moved over to alto.
It's solidly built, you got plenty of brass for your money back then, the nickel plated keywork is pretty simple compared with modern designs
tonally, it's a pretty raunchy sounding beast, I've compared it to a Keilwerth SXR90 - my mate brought his round to my house several years ago and after all the admiring noises had died down, I jokingly hauled this out to see the difference. To our surprise it sounded pretty similar, although the Keilwerth is of course a far better instrument.
Since I have to put a price on this thing, I'll say £95 - which is about half of what I paid for it, but you could get a Chinese tenor for £200 odd these days. 5% donation to Pete's Charity.
I'm not certain how much it'd cost to send it via courier - over £20, I'd guess, so local pick up here in Leicester might be preferable..
I'm open to offers or trades for any interesting or unusual items
here's some pictures -
there's a lot more pics here - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nrozhyfiye89c0q/wKkV3nBEJc
