These are all the things you need to know when investing in a new instrument, or trying to learn about it when you get it home. More about the Conn Director saxophones can be found currently on the Web from saxpics.Ī simple, but unique idea - supply the description, review what the horn is like to play, weigh it and provide a video of what it sounds like.
Hydraulic expanded tone chamber and tapered bell bow adds to the full tone of this model. “Professional in everything but price, this tenor designed for the student has many of the top improvements of the higher priced saxophones. It comes at a very long line of fantastic saxophone manufacturing in the most important town in the world for horn production.
It was made in 1963 in Elkhard Indianna, before production moved to Nogales, New Mexico. Officially it is a student model, lacking the rolled tone holes and micro tuner of their top-line models of the time. This was named the Director by Conn, although it is more commonly known as a Shooting Stars model. Having bought it, I got a real compliment, ‘I’ve often heard buyers play the saxophone, you’re the first one who proved it’. Having asked the store-keeper to wash the dirty reed under water I played the instrument, which had a loud, clear tone. This was on a high shelf behind the counter, long forgotten I would imagine. I was escaped from a Sun analyst conference for an hour with my friend Peter. Suffering from a long-term buyer regret, I saw this in a pawn broker shop in San Jose in 2001. Eventually I traded it in for the Keilwerth SX90R reviewed on this site. Once I had enough money I bought a Conn 16M – but not this one.
Sorry for the dishearteningly bad news, live and learn.I was originally just an alto player, but always been interested in tenors.
The 50's era Director models are OK to learn the basics with, but you will doubtless need to upgrade to a better model down the road, and I agree $800.00 is WAY to much for this horn.
Only the Director 14M/16M horn production was shifted to the Nogales located, ex-BEST MANUFACTURING plant in the early 1960's (this plant was purchased by Conn in 1959 for the purposes of producing their Student to Intermediate line of instruments).
Production of Conn's professional line of Saxophones would end months later in 1971, giving a very small window of opportunity for any Artist horns to have been made outside of Elkhart, IN. There is some meager evidence of a handful of VERY late, end of the road Artist horns that appear as though they might have been assembled at the Nogales plant from old inventory parts, but these would be precious few in number, and would date to the very end of 1970 or so, after Crowell-Collier MacMillan purchased the company and moved all remaining Conn production to Nogales. 6M/10M/12M) were never made anywhere but Elkhart, IN pre and post 1959 up until they ceased production c.1971. They're not as sought after, so their prices are lower, but they can honk.Ĭonn's "Artist" horns (i.e. In fact, I consider the 1948 - 55 Conns "sleeper" horns. Post-323,000 horns without the rolled tone holes still have that distinctive Conn sound, and can be had at lower prices than the rolled tone hole models. Ones that are made prior to 323,000 have rolled tone holes and are usually more desirable. E24023), so if you find one with six digits and no letter (except possibly an "M" on older horns), chances are you have a pre-'59 Elkhart horn.
All the post-1959 horns have a serial number that starts with a letter (i.e. If you like the horn, I would suggest checking out the Conn 6Ms. I do concur with Barry's assessment that it is a better horn than a lot of the low-end horns out there today, but it is not a professional level horn. It makes it somewhat better than the later Conns (post 1959, which are derisively referred to as Mexi-Conns because of they were manufactured at a new factory in Nogales, Arizona, which is on the U.S./Mexico border), but it is a student level horn. The horn dates to 1957, while they were still being built in Elkhart, Indiana.