Everything as expected

Everything as expected

I am extremely impressed with this saxophone. I am not an expert but decided I wanted to learn to play sax but did not want to spend a ton of money in the process. I started out by buying a "Professional Alto Eb Sax Saxophone" like the ones you see for sale here and other places for around $200. All of those are roughly comparable and in my opinion are probablly all made by the same company and sold under different brand names such as Glory, Lazarro, Mendini etc. The one I ended up was not listed as branded but ended up being a Lade brand. It seemed nice initially but I found that the pads did not seat properly and had to return it. As I started doing more research I came across the Roy Benson brand and even though you don't hear much about them here they are a lot bigger name in Europe and the brand is carried by a lot of very reputable music stores - a huge indicator these are not just cheap junk.

So I thought that for less than $400 it was still worth a shot buying this sax from Amazon since I knew I could return it with no hassle if it did not work out.

The difference between this sax and the Chinese cheapos (I believe this is also made in China but that is not necessarily a bad rap since Yamaha also makes many of their instruments in China now, all very high quality) is literally night and day. The construction is much better, quality metal, springs, pads - all much better than the cheapos. The key feel and response is superb on this. I checked it thoroughly with a leak light and all the pads seat extremely well with no leakage or sticking. Much nicer case as well.

I am still learning the instrument and have not yet mastered the chromatic scale and altissimo stuff so I can't speak to how well this may play in the hands of a real professional. What I can say with certainty is this is a much better quality sax than the cheapos mentioned and at $369 is still not a lot of money to pay for what to me is a very high quality instrument. As I progress I will try to update this review but for now I am very pleased - MUCH happier than I was with the Lade cheapo I sent back - there is literally no comparison. This towers above the others - I've read some different reviews that say this rivals the student Yamahas and that is nothing you are going to see on the Chinese cheapos for sure.

Beautiful instrument ! When I received it was packaged great ! The bad is that it didn't play well. Had to send back and got refunded. No hassle.