Jazz for aficionados

@frogman

I'm glad you like my last post and thanks for the positive comment. I agree with your opinion that the execution of the design is very important. Nice example with vintage Louis Lot flutes. Also, I agree with you that mouthpiece, reed, and ligature can have a significant effect on the response and sound of the instrument, much bigger effect than, for example, a silver or gold plating. After all, those parts are sound generating portion of the instrument.

“However, I doubt that when a player (Parker) is looking for money for his next fix that he is worried about the material used for his ligature. He would use tape or a shoestring if he had to.”

When I read this, could not stop laughing for five minutes. This just might be the truth. When he needed the money for the next fix, Charlie probably didn’t care much about the whole saxophone, let alone the ligature. This was probably the reason why he had pawned his saxophone and replaced it with the cheap plastic Grafton.

One question arises here related to the Grafton sax. Why did this strange plastic beast die out? Contrary to popular belief, Grafton’s sax did not die out due to the bad quality of the tone that it’s plastic body produces. The Grafton had very good musical properties and therefore was played, as it is mentioned here before, by some of the biggest legends of Jazz, by Charlie Parker and Ornette Coleman. Although this cheap sax was never intended to be used as a professional instrument, it found its way into the professional 'hall of fame' and that was probably much more than the designer could have ever hoped for. The main reason that these horns disappeared so quickly was in their fragility and unreliability and they were extremely difficult to repair - very little seems to want to stick to plastic body. Grafton visionary sax was made of a plastic that had little better impact-resistance than a wine glass. It was made from acrylic plastic and it is one of the most brittle plastic ever made. Grafton designer selected this type of plastic not because this material had some special musical properties but simply because it was cheap, and it was easy to work with. Here I have to quote again woodwind repairer Mr. Stephen Howard - TheSaxDoctor:

“There are no any mystical properties of the body material…………. it really doesn't matter what the body is made from - rather it's because the flaws in the construction knacker the tone. With much blood, sweat and tears (and a considerable amount of swearing) I can get a Grafton to play so well that it's indistinguishable from a decent brass alto.”

And that's exactly what I wanted to say in the last post. The material from which the sax-body is made of is far less important than the sax - manufacturers try to convince us.