Place of Manufacture – Elkhart, Indiana, USA.
I’ve included a video clip of the horn from my saxachronic chamber. It’s certainly not a ‘peashooter’ – a name used to describe early saxophones with a narrow bore towards the neck end and hard to keep in tune in the upper register. However the sound is loud and true when played with my Berg Larsen ebonite 6 (with Rico 3 1/2 reed) mouthpiece. As I noted above, the G#/C# key is a bit heavy under the left hand ‘pinky’ and the pearls feel more widely spaced and harder to depress than on a modern balanced instrument. It would be wrong to suppose a saxophone from the 1920s would play as easily as a modern horn. According to the 1926 catalog this alto was priced at $111.75 (including case) when new.
It has the serial number repeated on the neck and the face of a clown etched on the bell above the ‘Lyon and Healy, Maker, Chicago, USA’. In other details it is very similar to a Martin Handcraft and includes a Selmer ‘cigar cutter’ style octave key. It also has an extra pivoted spring at the top just behind the upper octave hole on the neck, which certainly does make the octave key more reliable. While arguably it simplifies things for the player, I find the additional weight makes it harder to play G#. I’ve never seen this feature on any other sax and it was almost certainly added by Lyon and Healy at the design stage. One very interesting feature is that the G# key also controls the bottom C#, rather than having a single key for each. On balance I think it was a polished brass finish. It appears dullish to look at, although an excellent renovation by my sax technician has made it very playable. I can’t tell if this was originally lacquered or not – if it was, it’s totally faded now. In this case the horn is a ‘clapper’, with the low B on the left and the low Bb on the right from the player’s point of view. John Henry Martin had worked for Conn in Elkhart, Ill., USA and others before he set up the Martin Band Instrument Company in 1905. I have a few of their horns and find them all to be expertly made, if a bit light on the weight of brass. According to Dr Rick the serial number would make the year of manufacture 1920, which seems appropriate for its features. I have no doubt that my sax was made by Martin from the bevelled tone holes and the font of the ‘PAT APPLD FOR’ stamp above the serial number. According to Wikipedia it boasted making 100,000 instruments a year in its 1892 catalog, making it an interesting precursor of the major companies like Conn, Selmer, Martin and Buescher who would manufacture these kinds of numbers for saxophones alone in the late 1920s and Yamaha, who would do so again in the 1960s.Īlthough they manufactured a few of their own horns (see the excellent article at saxpics) – it looks as if the majority of their instruments were made (albeit to their own designs) by other companies. The company, still based in Chicago, Ill., USA was formed in 1864 and began making brass instruments in around 1890. Lyon and Healy were a US-based department store, opening for business in the 19th century. He has a lot of different instruments for sale, although I believe violins are perhaps his main thing. What a grand tribute to capitalism it is – to be buying ancient saxophones on a Sunday morning from the back of Tony’s estate car. This was one of a couple I bought at the time. Over the years I have acquired a number of fine instruments from Tony, who is a keen on sailing, so we sometimes meet in the car park of a local reservoir when something interesting comes up. I bought this alto from Magginisupplies, who are based in the West Country.