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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jonf" data-source="post: 628064" data-attributes="member: 7">Well, I've given it a quick play. By objective saxophone standards, it is a pretty terrible sax. Compared to my cheapest sax, a Yamaha/Vito, it is lousy. In fact, compared to a cheap Chinese made sax like a Gear4Music, it's still pretty terrible. However, it does play, and it sounds like a sax (I used my normal Yanagisawa 7 metal mouthpiece). It was also pretty good fun, as it was so odd. So, why make the comments above? Partly the design and build of the sax, partly condition. The action is sloppy and imprecise, there was flex in the rods and the lower stack E key has the pad retaining button right in the middle of the touchpiece. The octave mechanism has a lot of slop in it. The pads were not very clean, and it looked like the sax had been played a lot, then left unplayed for a long time. Pads were sticking, especially the G key. The palm E and F pads clipped each other, which stopped the E closing properly. A few tweaks and cleaning of sticky pads and it was possible to play a tune. The more I played it, the better (less bad) it got, I presume as the flexible pads moulded back to the shape of the tone holes. So, it was cheap, it's not as good to play as a student Chinese-built sax, so what are the positives? Well, it is incredibly light. I did use a sling, but I really didn't need one. It also sounded just like a saxophone, and it played down to bottom Eb. It looks very distinctive, in white with blue pads. At what I paid for it, there's enough fun to be had to justify the purchase. I think the next thing is to give it a proper clean. Given how it's built, I am giving serious consideration to totally immersing it in some lightly soapy water, followed by total immersion in cold fresh water, then leave it to air dry. Tomorrow I plan to do a three way test, Yamaha Vito YAS 23 vs Grafton vs Vibrato. If that throws up anything interesting I'll post an update.</blockquote>

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