Need help identifying this saxophone

[jbtsax]

A repair tech I know on another forum wants to know more about the saxophone in these pictures. I was hoping someone on this forum would know----Pete, Helen, ??

 

[pete]

It's a Malerne. I'd link you to the pics I had posted on saxpics.com, but that and USAHorn.com are currently down. Attached is a pic of a somewhat older one, but you can see that interesting-looking low C key touch.

Off the top of my head, I remember that Malerne sold Buffets as their "pro line," so I'd guess you'd call this an "intermediate" model.

I have been wrong before, so make sure that horn has "Made in France" stamped on it.

 

[Jaboscaz]

Hi Pete. Thanks for the quick info. The horn is actually stamped "Made in Italy".

 

[pete]

Ooh. Intriguing.

There are a lot of Italian saxophone manufacturers. I know your horn's not an Orsi or Grassi. I'll give a possibility to a couple others:

* Rampone & Cazzani. If you take a peek at this, the OP has a horn that has the same bell-to-body brace as the one in this thread. Milandro is fairly well recognized as the guy that knows the most about Italian saxophones and he says that R&C copied some Malerne designs. I'd say that this is your best bet. (Milandro also gives an e-mail address so you can contact R&C for information.)

* Alfredo Santoni (Ditta Giglio). These folks made horns for Buffet and a bunch of other folks. The low C on Santoni's Mogar models is very close and the keyguards are also pretty close.

* Alfonso Rampone (A. Rampone). The only real reason I mention them is because I haven't seen enough of them. The ones I have seen don't look like your horn, tho.

Doubtful it's Desideria or Kalison. Desideria's designs are insanely odd and Kalison really didn't produce in large quantities.

Oh. Sorry. Forgot. What's the engraving on the bell say?

 

[jbtsax]

These photos were copied from Saxpics. They show a Malerne Tenor. Notice the keyguards, the shape of the low C touch, and the bell to body brace.

 

[pete]

These photos were copied from Saxpics. They show a Malerne Tenor. Notice the keyguards, the shape of the low C touch, and the bell to body brace.

Yes, but the point is that Malerne is a French company and the horn this thread is about is stamped, "Made in Italy." While I have seen a couple horns that were actually made someplace other than what's stamped on the horn, in the 1950s-1960s, when the horn in the OP was probably made, you'd have more cachet with "Made in France" than "Made in Italy." I've also pointed out that the Santoni horns were really good copies of Buffet horns.

Helen and I have pointed out that there are some Germanic horns where the body was made in one place, the keys in another and the horn was assembled/lacquered/set-up in another. I'm not saying that that was the case here, but it's a possibility.

 

[jbtsax]

Another feature this sax has that matches the Malerne is the "saddle" that guides the low C# key which is very unusual. There are too many similarities to not come to the conclusion that the Malerne and the sax in question were made in the same factory or in another factory using the exact same parts---regardless of what is stamped on the instrument.

 

[pete]

Of course, I am the artist formerly known as Saxpics. While I sold the website some five years ago, I still have the source files. The horn you picture above, JBT, is from a gentleman named Robert Hogg. The pics were sent to me in 2003. Extract from the e-mail:

I read up on the beasts and then took the plunge and bought a Tenor on eBay for a reasonable sum, advertised as a "Caravelle, Brittany," vintage, the only references I could find on the Web were those left in Forums by the vendor who as obviously just as keen to find out about it as I was. It looked good so I bought it anyway.

When I got hands on so to speak it became obvious that the Caravelle name had been put in by Engineers stamp to the right rear of the Bell (about 4 o-clock looking down in the playing position), I think this is no more than an owners mark, a Hotel or Cruise Ship band instrument maybe. BUT - what is it?

On one site I found a reference to a distinctive Dolnet engraving which seemed to be inspired by the graphic illustration of magnetic fields using a bar magnet, a sheet of paper and some iron filings and I thought WOW! Subsequent searches led me to your Dolnet section, hence my e-mail.

My Tenor certainly has an engraving similar to that, it has mother of pearl buttons on the keyguards, but they resemble Alto one piece keyguards rather than the separate Tenors guards.It had been covered with gold lacquer which had been crudely removed except for some hard to get at bits, and looked as though it had been 'scraped' instead of dissolved.

The mechanics seem sound if a little stiff, needs a bit of oil and some loving care, there is no perceptible axial movement in the supports and only the slightest 'tick' end to end which I would suggest is no more than reasonable clearance, the end pin screws show no signs of use or abuse. (I do have experience in engineering). Either it has had little use or has undergone a professional service during its life.

Note that the horn's not engraved "Malerne." It's engraved "Caravelle."

Again, I definitely agree that the horn looks a lot like the horns I've actually seen engraved "(Robert) Malerne" and/or like the ones in their catalog (attached). I also did a brief check of all the Malerne horns I had archived on Saxpics.com and only two have the bell-to-body brace that's on the horn in the OP. Neither of those horns were engraved "Malerne." No other Malerne pic I have has a serial number with a leading zero, either, like the Robert Hogg horn. That's never definitive because some people just don't bother to say that the serial number has a leading zero -- and I rarely get pics of full serial numbers. I also don't have any pics of a "Made in Italy" or "Made in France" stamp on any horn called "Malerne."

I also want to mention that, in the case of the Buffet horns "cloned" by Santoni, the horns they're cloned from are not identical. I also don't think that the parts used on the Santoni horns are sourced from Buffet because the main reason why Buffet used Santoni was because Santoni had equipment for high-volume mass production that Buffet didn't have. (I'm not saying the OP horn is a Santoni. It could very easily be exactly as you say, JBT. I'm just saying that another Italian company could have used the same techniques as Santoni.)

 

[pete]

Further on this.

I had downloaded some pics of a Santoni bari awhile ago. It looked like it had a passing resemblance to other Malerne horns I had seen, but I've only got pics of one other Malerne bari in my archives, so I didn't pay it much notice. However, today I found a tenor. It's very clearly engraved, "Ditta Giglio Alfredo Santoni." There are, of course, two major differences between the OP horn and the Santoni I've got pics of, namely the right vs. left bell keys and the bell-to-body brace, so I'm not making a 100% identification. I just think that the OP horn and other Italian makes merit a bit more investigation.