Hi, I am switching from alto to tenor sax and on ebay i found a sweet black tenor sex made by "helmke (german engineers" and its only $300. I was wondering if anyone can tell me if a Helmke tenor sax is any good or is it bad because its so cheap?


the seller seems like a manufacturer and has many of them listed.. they are absolutely new.


thnx,
Bopuc

sorry i meant tenor sax not "sex"

so far thr reviews i recieve say its a good instrument. Hope that helped

I can tell you from working in the band instrument retail business, that `helmke` band instruments are scam. There is nothing more to it. Budjet horns look good and sound acceptable when taken out of the box, but the quality of construction does not hold up against any name brand student instrument (i.e. yamaha or selmer). First the laquer will crack and come off, then the keys will go out of adjustment, then the horn will start to rust internally, leaving you with a rusted out ugly piece of crap with no warranty, no gaurantee, and no maintenence help from instrument repair shops. There are three brands of acceptable student instruments: selmer, yamaha, leblanc/vito.

Ya... i would deffinatly not buy it... especially because when your buying your instrument you always want to check it out beofre you buy it to make sure it`s in good condition and isn`t cheaply made

I know what some people will say about the Helmke tenor saxophone, but i beg to differ, because i own one of the many Helmke saxophones that your talking about and it is a wonderful peice of work, and I`ve owned mine for quite awhile with no problems and my saxophone is silver with brass fixtures, and lets just say that anybody who has wanted to test my saxophone has been extremely impressed by it. Just because its cheap doesn`t mean anything, it could be a new company trying to get people to try their instruments. So use your own judgement.

I found a black alto Helmke for about $300 three years ago. It`s been good to me, but I`d like something better. If you`re a beginner, take it, and get something more expensive if you decide to stick w/ it. I`ve decided to be a music major, and I`m saving for an alto that costs $5000.

if you want the common popular brands, the guy up there said selmer yamaha and vito. He forgot Keilwerth and yangisawa, the other major sax makers, incuding keilwerth, which currently makes the most expensive (besides your limited editon saxes) and in my opinion best sax, the shadow. Not a student horn though. In realtiy, contrary to what most music salesmen say, the china horns, while bad, can be fixed, it`s just the weilding that gets tough. some are nice, some crap. It`s all personla opinion, just explore everything before you decide what to get or think

Actually he said 3 acceptable student horns and Yanagisawa and Keilworth only make professional horns. You are correct they are great horns, I`m a Yani man myself.

Later
CJ

actually, whileof course i`ve heard of yani`s, seen them for sale on the internet and in catoulogs, i`ve never actaully seen on or heard one. Not that I doubt thier reputation, just thought it was weird. course keilwerths aren`t big round here either, I probably have one of the few really nice ones in my area, and i got it online. funny how that works, I guess the stores down here are all just selmer and yamaha.

keilwerth actaully makes a student horn, and an intermidiate horn as well as the pros, but the ask a bit more than teh other brands for them, course they`re probably better.

Noted, I didn`t know that about yanis, I was under the impression that they did make em. thanks .

Nice thanks for the info I didn`t think Keilwerth made student models but they do. I did a little extra research and found that the student models are made by the Jupiter company in Taiwan and their professional horns are made in Germany. Thanks for the info.

Later
CJ