Vito soprano saxophone

[lamar reeves]

A lady here in Maui has a silver curved Vito soprano.It says,Made in France
on the bell.The original case also says Leblanc.The serial # is 17238.
It's quite heavy for a soprano leading me to believe it was made awhile
back.Anyone have any info including what it may be worth?The horn is in
excellent condition.(May I also post this on the soprano forum or is that
verboten?)

[Dave Dolson]

Lamar: Double-posting is frowned upon because it reduces and confuses the number of responses in both threads.

The Vito curvy may be a stencil made by some other manufacturer contracted by LeBlanc. Those SOTW members more familiar with Vito and stencils in general may have better or even contradicting information.

If you are considering buying it, I guess the most important thing is how the horn plays. A suitable price can follow that. DAVE

[mosplace]

Hm, don´t know what has happened, but the reply I have written yesterday is gone :?

Well, here it is once again.

The old Vito saxophones are mostly made in France. These are professionel horns of highest quality manufactured by Beaugnier. This was a very small, but very very good saxophone manufacturer in France. Beaugnier belonged to Leblanc, since Leblanc never manufactured saxophones by themself in France.

The saxophones that where made by Beaugnier, are high quality profi instruments. They are often compared to Selmer and SML. I wouldn´t sell this horn. It is probably an awsome one. Beaugnier was closed down somtimes in the mid 60ies. The production became to expensive for these saxophones and Leblanc aquirec Holton in the States. So they start producing saxophones in the States. Later on the horns where made by several manufacturers even Yanagisawa. But the Vito that are stamped Made in France are all made by Beaugernier.

I have one of these beautiful Vito Beaugnier horns myself. A very very rar Vito C-Melody, only 22 of them have been sold. They where produced sometimes in the 60ies.

Here are some pics.
Vite /Beaugrnier C-Melody (http://www.simplysax.mynetcologne.de/Vito.htm)

[lamar reeves]

I cant really try out the French Vito because of poor pads and leaks.Mo,
thanks for the info and the beautiful photos.Do you know the years these
were made?Does the serial number help?I still have no idea what is a fair
price.

[keuhkoman]

Hi,

In case you decide to sell the horn I might be interested.Would be interesting to see pics of it in any case.<jukka.perko@viapori.fi>

[mosplace]

No, i haven´t found out, what year it was manufactured. It is strange, looks like Leblanc doesn´t want the serial numbers to be public.
They say, they don´t have the numbers anymore. :? :?

I have this theory, that it maybe the 196 sax produced in 1957 or it has been pruduced 1965 either the 7th sax or in July. I don´t realy know. I would like to know how many saxophones Beaugnier has produced each year.

I don´t have the slightest idea, why the do this. The only thing I know, is that leblanc/Vito has produced this sax sometimes in the 60ies. That´s alt least the info you can find in the web. But maybe it was produced in the late 50ies. Must be sometime around that, since the have closed down the Beaugnier factory sometimes in the mid 60ies.

But that is all the info I can give you. I´m gratefull for any hint, about the precise year.