Buescher 400 alto saxophone
Origin: USA
Guide price : Anything less than £800 is a bargain
Age of review model : 60+ years?
Date reviewed : Aug 02

Description : A top level vintage horn, sporting a host of unusual design features that make it one of the most interesting instruments out there.

Now this is a beautiful horn!
Seriously, I don't mean it merely looks nice, or even unusual, it's very definitely a beautiful horn.

The first thing that hits the eye is the profile of the bell.
It looks shorter than a typical bell, but this is an optical illusion brought about by a combination of a flare that starts lower down than on your average horn and ends in a wider bell rim ( by about a centimetre or so ) - with the added difference of the bell key cups being situated to the rear of the bell.
Also, the bell is set slightly further out from the body than on a modern horn, which lends the instrument a very open and uncluttered look.
A nice touch which can't quite be seen in the photo is the raised Buescher logo on the bell. This disappeared from later models, regrettably.

The build quality is good, as you'd expect from a top-flight vintage horn. A nice touch is the nickel silver band that runs around the underside of the bell. This helps to strengthen the bell flare - but you'd better not drop this horn on its bell, repairs would be difficult and expensive!
The crook is fitted with a psuedo-underslung key - that's to say that although most of the key runs beneath the crook, the octave key nipple sits atop the crook as per a standard horn.

The placement of the bell key cups to the rear of the bell have required some nifty changes to the standard keywork, including a rather neat and simple way of stopping the key cups when fully open - thus doing away with the need for guards and buffers.

The rest of the keywork has a typically vintage feel to it, but whilst it's not perhaps as slick as a modern horn it's still nonetheless fast and comfortable.
The bell keys fit nicely under the fingers, despite their slightly unusual angle .

A rather nice touch is the bridge mechanism for the low C# key. Clearly someone thought long and hard about this, it lends a very light and positive feel to the action - as long as there's not too much wear in the bridge key barrels.
You can see how the key pivots on the right hand key stack rod, with the actuating key linked by a little 'bridge' that pivots on a pair of tiny rod screws. Note the chunky multiple pillar that takes the right hand stack and bell keys.

Another unusual design is the side Bb/C linkage ( also used on the body octave key ). The link itself is a metal pin bent at 90 degrees, one end of which slots into the key cup arm, the other into the actuating arm.

In practice this works quite well, and is less noisy than you'd imagine - but you wouldn't ever want to lose the pin as it's a bit more complex that just a bent bit of rod!

The only handling issues I could fault were the top F key touchpiece tends to obstruct the 2nd and 3rd ( A & G ) fingers, the unusual rectangular octave key thumb rest lacks a bit of support for the rear of the thumb, the right hand thumb rest was a tad small... and the bell key action took a bit of getting used to due to the slightly different weight distribution of the cups.
None of these are serious issues and are the sort of thing you'd get used to in no time at all. You could sort the palm key issue out with a spot of judicious bending ( or realigning, if you want to pay more for the job! ) of the F key.

A couple of other niggles then! In common with most vintage horns the bell to body stay has woefully little support at the body end, with just a tiny little base to support the bell. Not much you can do about this unless you're prepared to modify the stay - which is not something you'd want to do lightly on a vintage horn. Best just to be careful.

The Buescher 400 is fittedwith the dreaded Norton springs throughout. Why dreaded? Well, several reasons. Norton springs are ordinary needle springs that have been pre-fitted into a threaded brass sleeve. Instead of the usual deal where you simply fit the springs straight into the pillar, Norton springs have to be screwed in, sleeve and all. In theory it's great - it means that anyone can change a spring. In practice the idea fails because you'd still have to be able to dismantle ( and reassemble ) the horn to change most of the springs.

Also it relies on the availability of replacements, which aren't that common - and if your repairer doesn't have any Norton springs in stock then you're stuck. ( There IS a way around this problem, it's fiddly and time consuming though ).
There's also the possibility of the sleeves working loose in the pillars, which can lead to an unresponsive feel to the action.

Lastly ( phew ) there's the point screws. Regular visitors to my site will be well aware of my dislike for parallel point screws - which is what the 400 is fitted with.
The use of this type of screw makes it impossible to adjust the point screw action for wear, so it's essential to keep the action well lubricated. You can just see the pesky blighters poking out of the compound pillar in the low C# photo above.

Again, these niggles aren't too serious - but they do have an impact on the care and maintenance of the instrument.

As for the playability, well, I found it very hard to decide exactly how to describe the sound.
On the one hand there's that lovely 'roundness' you'd associate with a vintage horn, yet at the same time there a crisp brightness that not only cuts through in the upper register but makes its presence known right down to the low Bb.
There was something very clearly different about the way I was hearing the sound. My initial explanation was that the angle and profile of the bell was the reason - but if you stand the horn up next to a modern one you'll see that there's very little difference, save for the bell rim as mentioned earlier.
Perhaps then it's that extra centimetre of flare that throws just that little extra bit of sound back to the player's ears?

After having blown a mere half dozen notes I convinced myself it was a ballad horn - with its lyrical sweetness of tone and the way the notes seems to ooze from the horn.... but a mere few seconds later it turned into a bop horn, with precise definition of notes in fast passages, coupled with a edgy dryness to the tone.
Or was it a classical horn...with its even response and hauntingly ethereal presentation? Or a solid rock horn, with a full-bodied sound that easily filled a room and etched the notes into the glass on the windows?? Tonewise it could be all things to all players.

Even as I was sitting here trying to think of how to describe the sound of this horn the client ( Pete Thomas, no less ) arrived to collect it. He told me his wife described the instrument as 'the sexiest sax' she'd ever heard.
I don't think I can top that.