It's a nice entry level instrument. The tuner and exercise book encourage practice

I purchased this sax to take it friendly gatherings, but where I still wouldn't want to leave my $5000 Yamaha sax anywhere out of my sight. Once you replace the mouthpiece (I'd recommend the Vandoren AL3) it plays great. The mouthpiece that comes with is so bad that it will discourage any beginning player. You must replace it! The other problem is that it's difficult to pull a cleaning/drying rag through it. This is because there are a lot of weird metal protrusions into the central core of the sax. These have no effect on playing it and don't affect the sound, as far as anyone but great purists would notice, but it thwarts any rag from being pulled through it. It comes with this weird "bottle scrubber" sort of thing, but it doesn't do much to dry it out. So, just forget that scrubber thing. All in all, it's a great value. Nothing has broken, bent or jammed. Just be ready to clean the G# and C# pads with a wet, then a dry cloth every so often. I've been on the lookout for any of the long rods to become loose, but this hasn't happened. I was kind of expecting such, for the cheap price, but, so far, so good. But I'd keep a small (3/32) jeweler's screwdriver around, just in case.

I ordered this saxophone for my 5th grade daughter to use in her school band class. I'm not expert enough to speak to other situations, but if you're considering purchasing this saxophone for a young, beginning player, I highly recommend it. Two reasons:

#1 I'm familiar with other instruments but know/knew next to nothing about the sax, so I asked my daughter to have her teacher give me an honest opinion. The music teacher said that for a beginning musician, this sax is more than adequate; he felt that it was probably good enough to last a musician into high school band. Again, while a serious, experienced saxophonist would probably want a better horn, the "Mendini by Cicilio" is fine for a beginner.

#2. The cost as compared to renting from my local music store. Obviously this will vary from place to place but I live in Utah, where things tend to be comparatively inexpensive. That said, to rent my daughter a sax would have been $55 a month. We could return it any time, or after paying $1100 we would have owned it. But at a minimum we would have needed the rental for nine months--one school year--for a total cost of $495. That's about $300 more than it cost to purchase a sax outright. Yes, the rental was a better quality Yamaha, but see "reason #1" above for why that doesn't matter. The only benefit to renting was free repairs, but unless someone is seriously careless with the instrument that's not going to cost anywhere near $300. In other words, as counter-intuitive as it seems, it was much cheaper to buy this saxophone than it would have been to rent one for a single scholastic year. This doesn't even consider the 10 free reeds (they run about $2.50 each, retail), or the tuner/metronome (like the sax--not top quality but certainly good enough to get you started; probably a $15-20 value). The only hardware I'd suggest upgrading immediately is the neck strap: the one included is uncomfortable and has actually come unhooked a couple times just by the weight of the instrument.

To sum up: this is a very decent saxophone for a very low price, much lower than anything else I could find. I am extremely satisfied with this purchase, as is my daughter, the nascent saxophonist. It still sounds like an angry goose when she plays, but her teacher assures me she's doing fine, and that she has a good instrument to learn on.

My beginner is in 4th grade and well on the way, so I feel I can accurately report, now having worked over the instrument several times. The neck is the greatest and most immediate problem, as notes below A in the upper register will squeak if that neck valve opens on a press of the octave key. It is clear that nobody at the store bothered to set it up, and you or someone at school will have to figure it out. I don't fault the supplier much, though, because you are going to have to get used to things going wrong. When I was a kid, we didn't send out instruments: there was a senior student in charge of tinkering. So take satisfaction in joining a time-honored tradition!

The next thing that went wrong was, pieces of cork mysteriously coming unaffixed from the linkage. It seems that some connections are doubly cushioned unnecessarily, with cork AND a silicone grease fitting. The grease dissolves the contact cement that keeps the cork attached. So if you would prefer the cork, get on that right away. I missed the opportunity, but the instrument seems no worse for wear, after mopping up the mess with some alcohol and cotton swabs. One silicone cushion had to be trimmed with an X-acto knife, because it was hitting an adjacent valve, in the right-hand palm keys.

Lastly, my young player tried to stand the instrument with the neck hanging over the back of a chair, and dropped the whole thing, knocking in the right-hand pinky keys and putting the adjacent linkage out of whack.The teacher was going to send it off (I guess she felt responsible for poor supervision and instruction, in this case), but I got out my tools and had it up and running the next day. Just coat posts with hot-melt glue to protect them, before cranking on them with pliers. I also found a C-clamp useful, to compress the posts toward each other, and with blocks of wood make a vise for the bail of the neck valve. Screws were all good quality, handled with my pecision slotted screwdrivers.

So my child is honking away happily, and we're both proud. This horn sounds great compared to supposedly better instruments, and has a great look with the Nickel option. Value justifies the effort.

It comes with everything you need very nice gorgeous embroided marble keys it works and sounds amazing and has a gorgeous case highly recommend!