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King split bell key altos

2K views 8 replies 6 participants last post by  Hornlip 
#1 ·
Are they any good. They seem to be really cheap. Opinions please.
 
#2 ·
I have a King alto (dated to 1925) with split bell pads. It was a gift from within my family. The finish is rough (probably gold-plate but hard to tell) but the horn is solid and tight. It is stuffy but I attribute that to the pad set-up. If overhauled, I suspect it would play fine, as have all the other 1920's saxophones I've owned. Of course, just one example of any saxophone is insufficient to make a judgment of the entire model-run. DAVE
 
#3 · (Edited)
I have owned a couple H.N White Kings from the 20s and played a few others. All of them were not good horns IMO. They all suffered from a fairly unstable sound and fairly poor intonation.

There is a reason they are so cheap and so few play them.

I'm sure there's a good one out there somewhere or someone that is enamored with them, but I'd stay away.

Do yourself a favor and get a Conn:) or if you must a Buescher.


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#4 ·
I dunno. My experiences have been otherwise.

I think Steve Goodson sorta wrote some bad things about them back in the salad days, and those comments stuck.

However, I have refurbed around a dozen, mostly altos but a few tenors, and honestly, after a proper keyheight adjustment and using a nice medium-to-large chamber mpc, I found them to be no more flexible intonationally than a Chu or a split-bell Martin or the like.

One of my techs has done a few as well, and we have discussed this before and he felt, after his servicing, that they were quite good horns, certainly giving little to no ground to the Conns, Martins, Bueschers of the time.

I think they get an undeserved bad rap. I think they are a bit of a sleeper.

But, if your intent is to flip...they are a money sink. You may be able to recoup what you invested, maybe.
 
#5 ·
Do a search in the forum; there are a few threads from a few years ago about this.

I've got one of these, 90,xxx or so, sitting in a box waiting for attention. They are cheap. I don't think I spent over $100 for it, a few years back. Maybe less.

In brief, and only if I recall correctly, the story is that there were some real intonation and voicing problems on the early horns that were dealt with by various modifications to the keywork and, IIRC, body tube / octave pip location - something like that. That happened somewhere around the 70,xxx serial mark (or was it 75,xxx?). Some of the modifications were patented & there's a patent stamp on the horns with the alteration.

That is supposed to have cleared up the issues, but the horns made before and after the modifications are otherwise indistinguishable. Some people have encountered the early horns with problems, others the later horns.

These horns also have a a couple of quirky keywork features that might make even the improved horns hard to keep in regulation and maybe contributed to their enduring bad reputation. Especially among techs who don't know old horns. The tone hole that opens for the pinky G# key isn't located in line with the other tone holes in the upper & lower stack. It's sprung shut and located on the side of the horn under & slightly behind the G# cluster. IIRC the idea was to avoid having a pad closed anywhere under the main stacks' tone holes when you played A and the notes above.

Incidentally, in terms of ergonomics, the G# cluster itself might be the best of the '20s horns.

The octave key mechanism is also tricky - there are a couple of interesting linkages that I can see causing problems if not set up well.

Other than that, the horn & keywork on mine seem to be solidly built. Keywork is pretty slick - like later King horns. It's way too leaky to say how well it really plays - I think most the pads are original; plain leather with stitches. It was promising enough to keep around, anyway, and take a spot in the overhaul wait list.
 
#6 ·
I haven't played a dozen Kings, but I've played a handful and none of them were suitable for professional gigging.

The intonation was off between the octaves fairly significantly. From low Bb to middle C# was ok and from middle D to high F was also ok. It just so happens that they had about a quarter step disagreement with each other:)

BTW. I wasn't around to hear anything that Steve said about these horns, nor did I ever read what he said about them elsewhere. Just my playing experience on them.

I think there are sleeper horns out there, but this isn't one of them IMO.


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#7 ·
[. . . . ] The intonation was off between the octaves fairly significantly. From low Bb to middle C# was ok and from middle D to high F was also ok. It just so happens that they had about a quarter step disagreement with each other:) [ . . . . ]
This is consistent with what I've heard elsewhere from people who had bad experiences with these horns, including a soprano - that the registers just wouldn't agree with each other. Could be this is what the improvements to the horn were meant to address, since they're supposed to have the changed something about the octave vents. Unfortunately I didn't know enough about them at the time to ask what the serial #s on their horns had been.
 
#8 ·
I have a few of the H.N. White "Kings" in my collection, and I find them fine little horns from this era. The post 1924 "Improved" versions have modified octave pips and a corkscrew G# mechanism . Those are to be preferred IMO.

I agree that these have unjustly been given a bad rap in the past, in part due to being paired with poor mouthpiece choices, and the monetary value has stuck as a result. Most of the intonation issues some report are traceable to the mouthpiece selected, or key height adjustment etc.

Once the keywork (including the table G#) is dialed in and adjusted properly, it work just fine.

They are sweeter and a bit more compact sounding than later Zephyr and Super 20's, but still have a bit of that King "Zing". I get a very Hodges like tone from my alto models of these.

Considering the rock bottom prices one can get for one of these, they can be quite the bargain for a nice playing vintage horn. The downside is that if you have to put serious money into them, you won't flip it for a profit, or even the price invested in all likelihood. Since I work on and restore my own horns, that isn't an issue.
 
#9 ·
Mike, FWIW the horn I've got came with a mouthpiece very similar to a '20s Buescher piece in that it had a narrow tip opening & barrel chamber. Judging from what else was in the case, looks like the previous owner played it in high school and then college ensembles. So I guess this one at least wasn't so bad that it couldn't be deployed in polite company!!
 
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