$900 Bass?

[jeffkendall]

Are these too good to be true?

http://www.alibaba.com/catalog/11027834/Bass_Saxophone.html

[Hurling Frootmig]

Hard to say but I'm not looking to flush $900.

[Merlin]

Yes, it's too good to be true.

[10mfan]

Looks like they might have "borrowed" a picture from Gayles site...

[Saxland]

Some info from the webpage


Date Joined: 2005
Online Postings: Products (1), Selling Leads (0)

Country/Territory: Indonesia :shock:

Business Type: Distributor/Wholesaler
Number of Employees: 5 - 10 People

[Reedsplinter]

It's ugly.:shock:

[DavidW]

I suggested in another thread that it seemed shady and was told:


there is no reason to doubt a company simply because it operates in a country that you are not familiar with

I guess the $900 price for a bass shouldn't alarm me either...

[Enviroguy]

Humm:

At least he could have found a picture of a new bass sax. How many "people in the worlds" can his company sell this one vintage horn to? :?

[porbem]

I would say Humm! too

The Company claims to be of a Distributor/Wholesaler type with just 1 product Bass Saxophone, having a number of Employees between 5 - 10 People whith the following main markets: North America South America Western Europe Eastern Europe Eastern Asia Southeast Asia Mid East Africa and Oceania.

Why starting with the Bass; it would look more suitable to start eith the alto/tenor or soprano ranges (maybe the bari because there are not many available with a reduced price).

Humm!

[Gandalfe]

Are these too good to be true? Sigh,... yes.

[Grumps]

I suggested in another thread that it seemed shady and was told:


there is no reason to doubt a company simply because it operates in a country that you are not familiar with

Tell the guy to drop the $900 then, and if and when he gets the bass sax, you'll pay him double for it...

[BrokenMonkey89]

It seems to me that, without specifically stating so on the website, this is the wholesale price of the sax, so you would probably have to buy a lot of these at $900 each, then you can resell them for whatever you want. Just my guess though.

[Grumps]

It seems to me that, without specifically stating so on the website, this is the wholesale price of the sax, so you would probably have to buy a lot of these at $900 each, then you can resell them for whatever you want. Just my guess though.
It's a vintage Conn bass sax... so I don't think they'll be coming off the assembly line any time soon.

[Enviroguy]

This seller says he is from Belawan, Indonesia. Maybe one of the SOTW members from Indonesia could go over and check this out. We'll show them that the lusty fingers of SOTW hold a tight grip on the entire Globe!!! :D

[hgrail]

Um, vintage style horn, vintage satin matte finish - but he's making them?

And $900.00?

Don't think so. Even the Chinese could only get it down to $8-9k..

[bluesaxgirl]

900.00? That's crazy.

[blowhead9]

Check the serial #. Could be that they have an actual horn, eh? We`ll never know for sure, unless someone has larger, uh organs, than I.

[Sasquatch]

I have no information to suggest this is truly bogus deal. However, my inner skeptic is jumping up and down wildly.

But this got me thinking, how much does it cost to make a sax? My uneducated guess is that materials make up little of the final price, with much of the cost being tied up in skilled techs making adjustments/fine tuning/etc. So is the price of a sax really the cost of a tech's time?

[Enviroguy]

I have no information to suggest this is truly bogus deal. However, my inner skeptic is jumping up and down wildly.

But this got me thinking, how much does it cost to make a sax? My uneducated guess is that materials make up little of the final price, with much of the cost being tied up in skilled techs making adjustments/fine tuning/etc. So is the price of a sax really the cost of a tech's time?

It depends on how the sax is made and how many are made. As with manufacturing other items, which I have more experience with, the costs of materials is usually not the major factor. Usually, the main costs in a retail item are distribution and marketing. For handmade items, this may be followed by labor costs. But for mass produced items, labor is far less than half the cost of equipment tooling. In a modern computer driven factory, labor costs may only be a small fraction. Also, the distributor/retailer usually takes the lion’s share of any additional profit from the discrepancy between cost of manufacture and price point. So if an item costs $100 to make but sales for $1000, the distributor/retailer takes most of the $900 profit. So even the cost of manufacture, as a whole, can become negligible.

From this you can easily see that there is much more profit to be made by marketing and selling a product than by actually making it.

And there's my Lean Six Sigma training at work!

Not bad for someone with science degrees. Who knows? I might be able to pass for an MBA one day. Now I just need my Lean Six Sigma "Black Belt". --YAAAA!!!! ;)

[milandro]

I suggested in another thread that it seemed shady and was told: "".....
there is no reason to doubt a company simply because it operates in a country that you are not familiar with....."
I guess the $900 price for a bass shouldn't alarm me either...

Yep, I told you that :twisted: and I stick by it within the context of that discussion.

However, there are several possibilities of misunderstandings (not necessarily malicious) in trading with any company in a foreign country ( I should know that is my job, I am an international food and beverages broker) and you'll be well advised to get a few things right before you buy.

One factor that one should always consider is possible language mistakes (calling a baritone a bass, which is not all that unlikely!) or considering the possibility that the person who does the advertising for the company could have placed a Bass saxophone picture..... of someone else's saxophone (because he or she didn't have any available) and thought it was the same thing as the baritone they could have called a bass.

This might be the case or not here, I don't know. Asking a few questions will not hurt! ;)

Having said that ....

You can and should ask for more information, perhaps ask an Indonesian member here (we have a few) to phone the company and perhaps pay a visit.

When buying something from a company that you don't know (this is more important than the company being based in a country that you are looking perhaps down to or not.....it has been my sad experience that Con-people are very active in very respectable (western) countries some of which have such legal systems that make, getting the money back, almost impossible for a foreign company......) it is perhaps wise to trust the credit card guarantees which will offer some sort of protection should the goods never come in your possession, one last thing, always send things via a courier , if possible.

[SuperAction80]

Just look the other way and run. Grumps hit the nail on the head at post #13. I really wish he was wrong about that, but...oh well.

[milandro]

the fact that looks like a Conn doesn't necessarily mean anything , a lot of Asian factory copy old instruments because that is every thing they have been having access to....however , I think the asking some Indonesian members (Indonesia is huge though....) could give us more info than anything else.

[SuperAction80]

You may be right Milandro, but those engravings, plating, and ergos look very familiar to me. Though I'll admit that the low C keyguard is kind of hard to make out from that angle. That very nice looking satin silver with the gold plated bell is enough for me to be suspicious. Every Indonesian horn I've seen on this site has looked like an inferior instrument right from the go. Honestly, I hope I'm wrong as having a $900 bass sax would be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

[milandro]

I am suspicious too, and I've seen and tried to play some Chinese Bass saxophones at the fair in Frankfurt, so they do exist (!) but to my knowledge they are priced around 1500 to 1800$ ex-works in China, 900$ is more the price of a baritone so I am inclined to think that there might be a photo and name switch here! Nevertheless, some further research might be beneficial. By the way, suppose you get a big chunk of metal for that kind of money it doesn't mean it plays (well or not) , and if it does, that it will keep on doing so in a few months or even weeks! I've seen Selmer bas saxophones not playing just coming from the factory!

[liveevil WR]

I Have found that a lot of those oriental sites do not show the correct pictures. Case in point , I was just looking at curved sapranoes that were from china and they showed two different horns. One with B and Bb tone holes on one side ,and one with them on the other. Asked them but could not understand there reply{bable fish or somethin}.Just for fun try bable fishing something in japanese or chinese, it will really freak you out. But if I can get a bass at something more reasonable than 10,000 , I`m up for it too. So what if you have to correct things, that`s half the fun....... SOMETIMES.

[liveevil WR]

Milandro, do we have any Indonesian members? I hope so,want to get one, don`t mind paying a bit more than 900 for a bass, just can`t afford 10 or 15 thousand.