Gallotone

Helen

Helen

Content Expert Saxophones
Staff member
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I picked up a vintage tenor sax yesterday that is stamped Made In Italy. The horn is obviously a stencil, and carries the name Gallotone.

All the research I've done on the name ties back to a record label from South Africa, which is where this horn came from. Gallotone did have guitars made that carried their name, and it seems that the only reason the name is known as a guitar, is because John Lennon once owned one. His Gallotone was sold at auction a number of years ago.

So my question is: have any of you heard of this brand in the sax world. SOTW doesn't have it mentioned at all, and as I said, the 'Net doesn't bring up any results related to saxophone. I thought perhaps some of you techs might have seen something come across your work benches.

I'm going to take some photos and get them posted. The horn is quirky. It is hybrid of a number of different things. Eg: It has the octave key shaped exactly like that of a Chu, along with a pearl thumb rest, but the sax right sided bell keys.

It doesn't have the build of a pro horn, but was used as such for many years in South Africa before the seller bought it from a musician 25 years ago. It has no damage at all: No dings, dents, bent rods, evidence of previous neck damage, or any other signs of misuse. One post has been resoldered, but that's it. The sax was obviously well looked after.

The horn has a really great patina where the lacquer is worn off. I'm not planning on restoring it. I bought it specifically to hang in my studio.

So does this sound familiar to anyone? I'll take some photos a little later in the day, and get them posted.
 
First thought always goes to Grassi. Pete will have a better guess.

How about some pictures?
 
Ed Svoboda said:
How about some pictures?
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I borrowed a better camera than mine, so I can take some good photos. I was hoping to do them today, but we had really nice, sunny weather, so the lighting was not good for photos. (Although the walk in the park was excellent!)

I'll take a few tonight, and see if they turn out. I suspect the flash will be no good though, but I'll see what I can come up with.

About it being a Grassi, I don't think so. It doesn't look even close to the photos. But then I suppose it could be much older. This one would probably have been built in the 50s or 60s, if not earlier.
 
Grassi has a distinctive style that looks more-or-less unchanged on all their models.

I told Helen in an e-mail that I couldn't really see much detail in the Craigslist ad pictures (too small), but I'd be willing to take a crack at it with bigger pics.

Seriously: with the country of origin stamped on the horn, it really narrows down the possibilities.
 
I created an album (called Gallotone) and put some photos in it. OK boys...and girls...Let's check out your vintage Italian sax knowledge...We've already established mine is lacking, so we can only go up from there! :-D
 
First, I do not claim to be the world's foremost expert on Italian saxophones, so YMMV. I rarely researched them because they were far less popular than French, German or US makes.

My opinion is that it is probably an Orsi stencil. Primarily because Orsi stenciled probably as much as Rampone & Cazzani, but this doens't look like an R&C -- and, as mentioned, it doesn't look very much like a Grassi (all Grassis tend to look a lot like Selmer copies, IMO).

Also check out http://www.saxer.org/, where there's an "Impala" stencil that has a very simular look and the owner thinks it's an Orsi.

FWIW, those keyguards on your LaMonte look a lot like the ones on the Gallotone.

Now, you could also confirm my hypothesis by e-mailing Orsi or Rampone & Cazzani. Unless another worthy happens to mention that he has an identical horn ....
 
pete said:
First, I do not claim to be the world's foremost expert on Italian saxophones, so YMMV. I rarely researched them because they were far less popular than French, German or US makes.

My opinion is that it is probably an Orsi stencil. Primarily because Orsi stenciled probably as much as Rampone & Cazzani, but this doens't look like an R&C -- and, as mentioned, it doesn't look very much like a Grassi (all Grassis tend to look a lot like Selmer copies, IMO).

Also check out http://www.saxer.org/, where there's an "Impala" stencil that has a very simular look and the owner thinks it's an Orsi.

FWIW, those keyguards on your LaMonte look a lot like the ones on the Gallotone.

Now, you could also confirm my hypothesis by e-mailing Orsi or Rampone & Cazzani. Unless another worthy happens to mention that he has an identical horn ....
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Nope, the Impala is a Grassi - the bow-body rings are a sure sign. My vote goes to Orsi.
 
My original thought when I first saw the horn was an Orsi stencil, based on the key guards & the pearl buttons on the keyguards. It looked just like my La Monte. However on closer inspection, I wasn't so sure. The bell keys on the right side of the horn, despite the horn most likely being older than the La Monte, & the different shaped octave key, were 2 of the features that made me think probably not Orsi. The other thing that Gallotone has, which is not found on the La Monte, is a matching serial number on the neck.

On the up side, we know that Orsi does indeed respond to emails about stencils it produced. (Or at least they did a few years ago when they confirmed that they made the La Monte.) So it should be fairly easy to find out from them if they made it.
 
tictactux said:
No I'm not. :) I wrote "bow-body rings". Is this the wrong term for the rings between bow/tube and bow/bell?
Anyhow, here they are (on either end of the bow), and they show the typical Grassi ornamentation.
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Oh. You're referring to the seal between the body and bow and bow and bell (on the Selmer, this was called the "Remova-Bell seal" (see http://www.saxpics.com/?v=mod&modID=13)).

I'd call them "joint seals".

The Grassis generally have the Mark-VI-esque ring that connects the body to bell, like the SX90.

Confusion cleared on my end. Sorry!

==========

That ornamentation is also on another of Helen's horns -- at least some models -- which is made by Hammerschmidt.

Engraving is generally the poorest way to determine a manufacturer. Hey, the folks that engraved Conns sometimes engraved Bueschers and Martins ....

Anyhow, as mentioned above, I could not find any Grassi pics anywhere that did not have the ring bell-to-body brace. That doesn't mean that there isn't one, just that I haven't seen one -- and I looked through a LOT of pictures. Helen's Gallotone (and the Impala) doesn't have a ring brace between the bell and body. That makes identifying it as a Grassi problematic. Further research also indicates Grassi started production around 1960 and the earliest Grassi I looked at was "about 1972".

Helen, I'm definitely with you on some of the key shapes and the switch on bell keys, but that might not be significant enough.
 
pete said:
That ornamentation is also on another of Helen's horns -- at least some models -- which is made by Hammerschmidt.
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Different ornamentation. :cool:
Engraving is generally the poorest way to determine a manufacturer. Hey, the folks that engraved Conns sometimes engraved Bueschers and Martins ....
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The ornaments aren't engraved. They're stamped I think. I can provide a closeup of my Martin Busine (Grassi stencil) if you want...
 
tictactux said:
Different ornamentation. :cool:
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... But the same idea :).

The ornaments aren't engraved. They're stamped I think. I can provide a closeup of my Martin Busine (Grassi stencil) if you want...
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Hold onto it for now. I'll eventually do something regarding Italian makes, but I probably will start with Rampone.
 
I took my La Monte tenor off the wall yesterday, and took some decent photos of it. (That one we know is an Orsi.) I put them in an album called La Monte tenor. This horn had been on my wall so long, that I had forgotten some of the details. Looking at it, and the Gallotone side by side, there really is no doubt in my mind that Orsi was more than likely the maker of it as well.

I haven't sent an enquiry to Orsi yet, because I wanted to get some pics of my La Monte done as well. Now that they're done, I'll send Orsi a note this week. Hopefully they'll respond like they did a few years ago when a SOTW member wrote to them about a La Monte he bought. It would be nice to know for sure who made this quirky Italian saxophone.
 
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