A field spotter's guide to saxophone manufacturing in Asia

"Where's it made?" If I hear this one more time, I may vomit. What possible difference does it make? The horn either plays well or it doesn't. I would respectfully sumbit that if you can't tell if a horn plays well and if the construction is robust enough to satisfy your needs, you have no business buying a saxophone. You can always find someone to help you with the necessary expertise if you lack the personal competence to make a buying decision.

The reality of saxophone manufacturing in Asia (and elsewhere in the world, for that matter) is far different from what most consumers have been led to believe. I've had the pleasure, honor, and maybe somewhat unique experience of dealing with most of the major "players" in the saxophone making game for many years. A great many of them have been visitors in my home. I spend most of every business day dealing with them.

The company I work with, Orpheus Music, is what is known in the trade as a "contract manufacturer". This means that everything we have made, we have made to our exact specifications. We don't buy anything "off the shelf" and then put our name on it. We take everything we have made to our specification (and all our saxophones are my original and unique designs) and then do final assembly and regulation at our facility in Texas. We go through a lengthy protoyping process, and I have a "posse" of professional players that I use to give me independent verification and validation of my designs. Almost nobody else in the industry does it this way.

Today, most saxophones are manufactured in Taiwan, China, Indonesia, and Viet Nam. Selmer still makes their "Paris" horns in France (although not in Paris!), Keilwerth makes a few (but not many) of their horns in Germany (often using components from other nations), and there are a couple of other small makers in eastern Europe and Italy. There are no saxophones manufactured in the United States. Yamaha still makes a few saxophones in Japan, but most production has been moved to China and Indonesia.

The vast majority of the horns manufactured in Asia are copies of the Selmer Super Action 80 Series II, which is not a bad place to start. A dirty little secret of the business is that the majority of factories (but not all) are basically "assembelers" of components that they purchase from multiple sources. I know of one specific industrial park in Taiwan where you can start at one end of a row of metal buildings and buy, from individual companies, bells, bodies, keys, and necks. It's essentially a shopping mall for saxophone components! You may have noticed that the keywork on many Asian horns appears to be identical. Can you say "they use the same supplier"?

Recently, I met with a large Chinese manufacturer, and the president of the company, in the privacy of my hotel room, offered me exact copies of the Selmer Super 80 II; Selmer Super 80 III; Yanigasawa 901; and Yamaha 875. Trust me, these were exact copies, and all were readily available for quantity purchase with any name I wished engraved on them. They were all very well built, and the parts were absolutely interchangable with the originals. Of course, you can order the horns with various cosmetic variations and in pretty much any finish you want. There's a huge amount of this sort of thing going on, and if the vendors know and trust you, they are extremely "up front" about what they are offering.

At this point in the discussion, it's worth pointing out that most of the features on saxophones are not protected by patents. Sure, there are a few patents out there, but those of us on the design end now understand that reality is that (1) filing patents is very, very expensive; (2) you can bet the farm on the fact that your patent rights will be violated, probably sooner than later; (3) if you think filing a patent is expensive, you need to consider how much it will cost to defend them in Asia, and what your chances are of prevailing.....

The reality is that very often, horns sold by "brands you know" are often very much the same. Last year, there was a lawsuit over whether the horns by Walmart (First Act) were different from the horns sold by Selmer USA. Expert witnesses were sent to the factories in China, and sure enough, the court found they were the same, and gave First Act a $16 million dollar judegment. This surprised nobody who is familiar with how things really work.

A couple of the major European companies (Keilwerth and Buffet) have their horns built in Asia. Same thing for Conn-Selmer. Is this a bad thing? Not at all. First, Asia is about the only place you can actually get the horns manufactured. There really aren't any other options available. Second, the Asians have the experience, the skill, and the equipment. Third, the price is right. Cost of living varies widely all over the globe, and the cost of skilled labor is significantly less in Asia. These are not "sweatshop" jobs: the workers in the saxophone shops are highly skilled and are very well paid. It is most unfair to judge the standards of various local economies by our standards. The cost of materials used is essentially the same: a kilo of brass costs about the same in Shanghai as it does in Elkhart. It's a global economy, stupid. Get over it.

I think it goes without saying that there is often a variation in build quality. This is where you (or your duly appointed proxy saxophone tester) have to make the call. But don't kid yourself. Some of the horns with strange sounding names that are unfamiliar to you play very well and will last a lifetime.