Apr 2, 2007
New Saxophone
BY DERRICK SOBODASH
million “thank you”s to my girlfriend for not letting me give up looking after things went bad. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have found this.
At work last week, I asked our Shopping Page writer to see if he could find a retailer for Jinbao saxes here in Beijing. Jinbao is a China-local instrument company that assembles its products in Tianjin just east of here. He found their Beijing distribution house and said it was on Xinjiekou Wai Dajie.
Around noon, my girlfriend and I set out for Jishuitan subway station and walked the entire stretch of Xinjiekou Wai from start to end on both sides. I was incredibly bummed after that and didn’t want to look anymore. I even resolved not to go back out and look until May or June. Shopping is always a huge ordeal for me, and that’s a long way to go to come back empty-handed.
She tried to get me to go look at one on Sanhuan Lu east of the old school I used to teach at, but I was too pissed off, so I just decided we’d head to Liulichang to do some other shopping we had been meaning to.
On the way there while I looked like I was wilting, she spotted a whole street of music stores out the window, so we got off. I must have seen 30 to 50 saxophones looking through those stores. It was awesome. Even the former Mars Music in the US never stocked more than ten saxophones at a time.
There were some amazing models. My second favorite was an X-G made from US parts, assembled in China for sale in the US. Somehow, the guy at the store was getting them before their US destination and had this beautiful copper sax for 3,800 yuan (just under US$500), and that’s before bargaining. It played beautiful, the left hand was incredibly smooth and the instrument looked awesome. They threw this black dye in with the copper and it made these beautiful spiraling patterns all through the metal.
But I finally settled on a Heinrich made in Japan and sold in Japan. The guy got it as an import. The body metal, I’m not sure what it is — just that it is black. On top of that, it has unlacquered silver plating on every inch of the instrument. It has a really nice, bright tone, and it goes very very well with my cast nickel-silver Jazz mouthpiece. I think the common metal or something really transfers the sound well.
My brother fixed up the mouthpiece for me and mailed it to China. It’s currently using a Bari synthetic reed. I have to say, I like the reed a lot, and the mouthpiece. It’s incredibly flexible. With proper control, you can actually play two octaves with the same fingering, and I’ve never made that happen before. It will definitely need more experimenting.
End cost after bargaining was 4,500 yuan (US$580). Anyone who plays sax can just imagine how much this job would cost in the US. I really just was drawn to it the second I saw it, and it wasn’t too hard to decide to buy this one.
In short, I’m very happy with the instrument and have started practicing two hours a day.
My girlfriend is awesome.
Rock on D. If you ever come back state side we’ll have to jam or something. I’ve been fiddling with my guitar again after a several year absence and have actually been getting passably good. Hopefully you find it as easy to get back into the swing of things with the sax.
Lord knows I probably couldn’t even play mary had a little lamb on it these days. Last time I picked up an alto was in 7th grade…
My favorite alto sax is the Selmer Series III, but they cost upwards of eight grand. You made out with a great find here! I’ll have to send you some more nifty accessories. I’m hoping to send over a reed trimmer, a reed case, the “reedvitalizer” (which is a special humidity system that optimizes reed performance without you having to wet them before practicing), and maybe a neotech neckstrap. Also, I’ll see what polishing cloth you should use on that. I’d reccomend wiping it off about twice a week (completely; leave no surface spared) with the polishing cloth. The metal won’t flake off so fast that way.
Oh, and no problem on the mouthpiece, bro. I’m hoping to get a leather ligature on discount that will fit better, though. So, we’ll see.
I used to play alto sax as well. With practice, you should be able to play 3-4 registers with the same fingering. The easiest ones to do this with are around low D and E. I used synthetic reeds for a short time, but came to have the opinion that aside from lasting forever they really didn’t have much to recommend them. You say that you use a jazz mouth piece and prefer a bright sounding instrument, though, so we may just have opposite preferences. I preferred a softer reed, so I could more fully utilize embouchure to control my tone.
If you guys need a trumpet player who does shitty vocals… well, you know where to look. >_>
Indeed, your girlfriend is awesome. Now then, what kind of present are you getting her? =P
She wants one of my old xiao (箫), so I’m giving her that with a music book. She wants me to teach her how to play it, but to be honest, I never learned how to read music for it. I just play it entirely by ear … So we’ll see how that goes.