Saxophone Review: Keilwerth 75th Anniversary Model Tenor

* Mouthpieces used: Yanagisawa Metal 7, Meyer 5 hard rubber, Selmer S90 C*, Beechler 6 metal

* Reeds Used: Alexander Superial 2.5, Vandoren Java 2.5, La Voz Medium

This is the first entry in what I hope will become a comprehensive series on all of the professional saxophone offerings currently on the market. I decided to start with the Keilwerth 75th Anniversary model tenor mainly out of personal curiosity. I have played many SX series tenors and altos and wanted to see for myself how Keilwerth planned to commemorate their saxophone-making success. What I found was a horn with some very positive and striking tonal characteristics that allow this horn to stand up evenly to other pro horns out there.

Now, before I begin giving my detailed impressions of the instrument, I feel I should add my standard disclaimer of this being my own opinion, and that your experience may differ greatly from mine. I consider myself an "average" player in the respect that I use equipment and tolerances common to many players. I prefer medium chambers and facings, medium strength reeds and have medium sized hands. When I test-play an instrument I try and consider how the design and characteristics might affect players with smaller or larger hands, less air capacity and the like. Ideally, I would like to give you, the buyer, the vicarious experience of playing the horn without having to endure the difficulty and cost of doing it yourself. With luck, this may be the starting point for you finding the horn that fits your needs.

The first impression of the Keilwerth is its striking beauty. This is certainly no ordinary horn from an aesthetic perspective. With the exception of the body, which is black, the entire horn is silver plated and mirror polished. The black body gives it a sense of invisibility, handsomely offset by the mirrored keys. That said, the appearance of a saxophone is the smallest part of the equation. Many very good looking horns play quite poorly. Thankfully that is not the case with this magnificent instrument.

The playing tests I undertook with this horn involved several different mouthpieces, reeds and musical styles. With any horn, I like to play it against the tuner and check its particular tuning quirks. I found the intonation to be quite remarkable with only the slightest adjustments necessary on high D, middle C# and the bell keys. A above the staff tended to play slightly sharp for me, but this could easily be the player and not the horn. I did find that to get proper intonation, I had to push the C* pretty far on the cork which is not really a problem, but proper lubrication of the cork is essential.

Once assembled, I put the horn through some noodling and scales and was struck by the strength and presence of the bottom end of the horn. Low notes were booming and resonant, yet responsive to subtone playing. I found this particularly tue with the hard rubber mouthpieces. Playing the top end and into altissimo was very even, although I found pushing above altissimo G with the C* to be somewhat difficult. One particularly nice aspect of the horn's timbral characteristics was its sameness between the regular and altissimo ranges. Many horns tend to get a stridency in the upper range which the Keilwerth did not seem to possess.

From the under-the-hands perspective, I liked the placement of the keys, especially the adjustable palm keys. One thing I found difficult to get used to was the octave button which was flush with the left hand thumb rest. In fast passages and octave jumps, I found myself actually missing the key. This is one of the things that might take someone some time to get used to. The key does seem like it would be easy to adjust if the buyer so chose. Pearl keys are somewhat cup shaped and tend to easily cradle the fingertips. Side keys are well-placed and within easy reach for modest sized hands like mine. As with most modern horns, the right-hand thumb rest is easily adjusted to accomodate different hand shapes and sizes. I moved the rest over slightly left from center and found the fit to be very comfortable.

When it came time to really put the horn through its paces, I joined up with the Ted Stewart group and blazed through some up-tempo charts, a couple of ballads and some medium standards. I would play the head once with one mouthpiece and then switch to another when playing the head out for comparison. I found with no uncertainty that the hard rubber mouthpieces were best on this saxophone. I liked the presence of the tone much better, and the intonation was right on the money. You can hear an example of the differences via the sound sample MP3 files listed below.

Overall, I was very favorably impressed by the horn, although the ergonomic design was a little tough for me to get used to since I am more comfortable with vintage Selmer (Balanced Action) saxophones. In this class of horns, I do consider this model of Keilwerth among the top offerings on the market, and certainly recommend it for a player who wants to shift between styles of music with equal ease.

Overall Rating: 9 out of 10

Suggested Improvements: Minor action changes that could be done by any qualified repair technician to better suit one's tastes, specfically raising the octave key plateau slightly.

Sample One ~ Ballad using Meyer 5 hard rubber mouthpiece and 2.5 Alexander Superial Reeds (my favorite combination with the horn) (2 MB Download)

Sample Two ~ Blues using Yanagisawa 7 metal mouthpiece with Vandoren Java 2.5 reeds (255K Download)

Sample Three ~ Latin/Swing using Beechler 6 metal mouthpiece and LaVoz medium strength reeds (1 MB Download)

Questions or comments about this review? Please e-mail me.