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4K views 14 replies 8 participants last post by  RedSpotFire 
#1 ·
I would like to buy a Bari sax. I did some research on Craigslist and found someone selling a king Bari sax for $1000. Would any of you recommend me buying it? Also I contacted the seller and he told me I could play test it before buying it.
 
#6 ·
Well it has a low A so I doubt that it's actually a King. It was probably made by someone else for King but has King's name engraved on it. That doesn't meant that it's a bad horn. King actually sold SMLs under their name and SMLs are great horns. There may have been others too but I am not a King expert. The photo you linked to doesn't have enough information for me to tell what it is.

The big question is how it plays and whether or not you like it.

Edit: I'm fairly confident that that is a low A horn, but the angle and resolution of the photo make it very difficult for me to be 100% sure.
 
#9 ·
This looks very likely to be a modern Chinese made saxophone .

I am reasonably sure that it is not a SML King Marigaux and who knows, for all this seller appears to know (or not say) the horn might even have only a mouthpiece called “ King” ( which were not, by the way, even made by King but made for them).

When I see pictures taken this poorly I always suppose they need the money to buy a decent camera!

Anyway, what looks too good to be true generally is not good. Cheap baritones are either old and beaten up or they are Chinese cheap baritones to begin with.
 
#10 ·
I have heard about pushing and pulling keys to feel for softness and play as being a test for poor materials.

A person might bring a tech or sax expert along to the play test.

You could check photos of the prospective purchase against saxpics

http://www.saxpics.com/?v=gal&a=3060

which is, I think the most modern of the baritones King made.

There is also Keilwerth New Kings and some other brands used the word King (royalty being a selling point (?)).

You can hunt these up in saxpics, also.

Personally, the story, price and photo combo would make me plenty nervous about throwing money away ...

[too good to be true story from me: Pristine old Bb bari for only a few hundred dollars from newspaper listing, wonderful horn. Turned out to be HIGH PITCH! Whoops.]
 
#11 ·
Keilwerths or Amati re called TONEKING and New King and they look nothing like the sax above.

Kings is a brand used often by Orsi but this is also not one of those.

By the way King, as a name, is not protected by a trademark for saxophones anymore and any Chinese company might call their saxophones King just like someone called their saxphones Adolphe Sax cie. (the company owned originally by the inventor of the saxophone) even though they have no ties with Adolphe sax other than being a Belgian company

see this M.King

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/M-K...lgo_pvid=602ce3b5-173e-4c14-aeac-442dee29a8c5
 
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