Selmer serial numbers saxophone

This allowed the metal thickness to be uniformed for each tone hole and now thinness in the body tubes. The later horns were made in Japan with drawn toneholes. These later horns apparently sounded much different from earlier models and have a brighter tone. Martin was an immigrant from Germany in that year. In the factory was destroyed by fire. And in he moved to Elkhart, Indiana and became one of the original workers, the 6th employee, to work for C.

Their saxophones are very distinctive as they have soldered on toneholes. The toneholes were fairly thick compared to regular drawn toneholes and they were also beveled. Handcraft Imperial — from to , ,xxx to ,xxx. LH table keys changed from a vertical Selmer mk VI style to 3 plate horizontal configuration.

Very little is really known about it other than it was sprinkled throughout a few years Handcraft production. Plastic RH pinky rollers. No Eb vent key. Considered a non-pro alternative such as the Yamaha 62 versus the Yamaha At least from ,xxx to ,xxx, to approx Even today you can find new horns labeled Martin, though they are Asian made and have no resemblence to the original Martin instruments.

In LeBlanc purchased the rights to Martin and resold Yanigasawa saxophones under the Martin brand. Model 26 One version of the Model 26 only went up to high E and had two right hand side keys. Left hand table keys were mk VI soprano type with a round pearl G.

The saxes still had wire key guards. The Bell was inline most saxophones of this era were inline. Full lower stack screw adjusters which stopped against the posts. Production was ceased at the beginning of World War II but was resumed after the war.

Some models had black finger pearls due to the shortage of mother or pearl. Altos — around 80k through 90k the neck opening was increased until the sound got bigger, brighter and fuller. The resistance decreased. This era VI is a favorite because of their overall flexibility in their compact sound with a good control for the level of resistance. Altos — k — Change in the neck bore and neck ring design. Horns have a harsher, brighter tone. This is basically a spring and a piece of rod inserted into the keywork to always keep the keywork tight with no slop that normally exists with wear.

This slug is on both top and bottom of the keywork. Super Action 80 serie III — ,, — 7, pieces made — ,, — 13, — ,, — 15, — ,, — 14, — ,, — 19, — ,, — 14, Selmer list ends.

These were made until Selmer introduced them in and made about 10, of them. It is said that they play similar to the later Mk. The short lived Mark 7 altos and tenors, were made from until Henri Selmer was born in , the 10th child, to Charles-Frederic Selmer. At a young age he quickly showed a gift for the clarinet. In he entered the Paris Conservatory and went to Mr. He quickly became Mr. In , at the time he finished the Conservatory, he began his real musical career and was appointed to the French Republican Guard.

Later he was named a solo clarinetist in the Opera Conique Orchestra. He was also playing at the Lamoureux Orchestra and had many concerts with those organizations all over France and Europe.

In being married with a family he decided to start manufacturing clarinet reeds and mouthpieces. He was quickly successful and started reaching the general public.

In the late s he started clarinet manufacturing an gave up his musical career. His brother Alexandre had a significant impact on importing saxophones to the US and in his Paris production of clarinets. His son Maurice and two son in laws assisted in developing and opening the company to other instruments and markets.

It is a merger of Conn and Selmer. They are two entities with one very close past. Alexandre Selmer, who is famous in the US and shortly Paris for his line of Alexandre clarinets came to the US and joined many renowned orchestras.

Clearly, there was room for improvement. This process was repeated for each year up to So about a third of the people using the list got the wrong year for their saxophone.

It quickly became obvious that an improved chart was needed. Fortunately, the primary shipping data could now be used to rebuild the serial number chart from scratch. Beginning with a list of all the actual sales, they were sorted by serial number. Next, they were grouped into serial number ranges of The chart at left shows that less than one quarter of the saxes in the to serial number range were sold in Most were sold in The range from to also showed less than half of the sales in , with most of the remainder being sold in Between the and range, most of the saxes were sold in This range became the initial boundary for production.

By taking a closer look, right down to individual instruments, the starting and ending points of the range were modified as needed. The most accurate serial number range for was finalized as — A look at the chart to the left makes the answer quite clear.

As mentioned above, the range was determined to be — , so the serial number range logically started at But many saxophones from to were sold in The majority of the horns in this range which were sold in , but clearly not all of them.

There are many reasons for this. Different distributors had different specifications, which affected delivery times. The US-Market horns, for instance, were not normally engraved, padded or lacquered in France. This meant that US-Market horns shipped earlier than others.

The more unusual types of saxophones, such as the Sopranino or Bass, were often sold months or even years later than one might expect. Individual saxophones with custom finishes or features would naturally take longer to build, thus delaying their completion date. The improved serial number chart is by no means flawless.

Douglas Pipher is a Canadian saxophonist, collector and researcher who has spent the last several years studying Selmer instruments with the goal of improving our understanding of Selmer history through primary research. He can be reached at: [email protected].

Hello, i had purchased a alto a radio improved, you said they are among your favorites, it needs a repad overhaul though it plays abit. No serial on neck piece. I,m going to put it up for sale on ebay. S axophone P eople. I need a professional horn, but a Selmer Mark VI costs too much How much is this horn worth? Hi everyone, I am curious about today's value of my Mark VI tenor saxo Thank you both for your time, opinions, and insight.

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