Cant work out how to edit the post (or if its possible!) but I just remembered why i started the post... YAS 23, YAS 275 or Selmer Prelude? Whats the verdict... and to justify my distraction due to shinyness, its probably because I've only once owned my OWN instrument (so please, please PLEASE dont tell me its a good idea to rent!) since i cant afford it, playing the piano and all, and i had to sell that six months ago because it would have cost too much to ship for what it was - a barrat and robinson six octave piano that wasn't good enough for me... but it was mine :( so i'm looking to buy no matter how many people tell me to rent :D... shutting up now so i dont end up talking to myself too much...

with all of the discussion of saxophones for new players, I'm surprised there isn't more emphasis on mouthpieces and reeds? I like Bari reeds because they are much more difficult to damage, and last indefinitely, never smell like the inside of your shoe when you put them in your mouth, do not need to be played on for 15 minutes to get wet enough to respond correctly, and if you had a mouth piece with a high intensity light bulb inside controlled by a rehostat hidden in your shoe you could lean into to operate, you could make your face light up just like when you were a kid with a flashlight in your mouth, while you were playing. As far as mouthpieces go, it is like making love, versus being attracted to someone. Compare doing what you do to make a sound to what someone does on a trumpet for instance, but without an instrument. Without a saxophone, or any reed instrument, there is silence, the lips close around nothing and seal themselves...and this translates into the beauty we love, and without a flute, blow in someone's ear. But someone who does what a trumpet requires gets what? See what I mean. I have three alto saxophone mouthpieces, a hard rubber Selmer S80 E facing, a stainless steel Berg Larsen 110/1 and a Beechler S2S...I got both the Berg and the Beechler in a bassoon and oboe store, and they had sat there for decades, and had been marked half price almost that long ago and they couldn't get rid of them, so I got a really good deal. I like to switch between the three, not only for the different coloration of the sounds, response and all of that, but also because I go in spurts where I play for awhile, and then am inactive, so the Selmer is a lot easier when the muscles of my embrochure are out of shape, to play on and this allows me to build into say the Beechler, which seems to require more strength to control...the Berg is in a class all of its own and I'm not sure I can analyse it yet...but all three are very interesting, and speak to different emotions and/or differently to similar emotions or feelings...lean back like the rocker on your rocking chair just ran over the cat's tail...be the light at the end of the tunnel...or a car wreck in the middle of it...hear the slap of the shoe shine boy in your tongue on the reed...crawl around with your tongue like a soldier clinging to the ground under assault, and learn the honor in cowardice is to fear to die...too brave to live, but too chicken to get away with dying...the hairy chested grey haired muscular guy who throws you in the pool when you are six and is a terrorist by habit and probabley doesn't even understand this...why do they say the juices from the reeds shrink your frontal lobes...I'd rather have a bruntal phlebotomy