I will, to the best of my abilities, as you and others know I am not a technician by any stretch of imagination! Anyway Vibratosax has already said on SOTW (Or admitted
) that because of the comments received that they are thinking of changing the tooling by adding two extra injection moulds
http://forum.saxontheweb.net/showthread.php?149430-Vibratosax-user-experiences/page6
this is good news for the future buyers and my guess is that by the time everybody (especially the technicians among us) has received his " prototype" many more changes will be necessary. This show , once again, how difficult is the process of innovation.
But ultimately innovation has to have a goal and if the goal is to provide a lighter saxophone to the masses my question (especially to myself as a prospective distributor) would be: how large a quantity are these " masses" who will require a lightweight saxophone (and why)? If that's the only thing that the vibratosax will be introducing and what's the trade-off?
If we get a lightweight saxophone, are we going to put up with any " problem" given by its " light-weighted " and prototypical nature or would we (the masses
) want a saxophone every little bit as good (if not better, because this would be the point of innovation, in my book) as a cheaper (not an unimportant factor) Chinese saxophone?
At the moment, I can buy, if I want, a Chinese saxophone for half of the price of a Vibratosax (wholesale but even retail they can be cheaper, look at Thomann for example) and, as it stands now, the best I can tell a customer is that it weighs less than 1 Kg , which, as it is , is my only selling point. I can , of course, tell his son or daughter that it looks extra-cool because of the colours and that everyone in the school band is going to find them very popular because of that but the reality is, and stays that, the ones who will have (ought to) be convinced are the parents (who are footing the bill) and educators and that the cool looks are going to be more a hurdle there than they are an advantage with them.