Gear4Music/Rosedale BTS-500G baritone saxophone

Origin: China (www.gear4music.com)
Guide price: £1300
Weight: 5.68kg
Date of manufacture: 2007/2017 (Rosedale)
Date reviewed: January 2008/May 2019

A generic baritone clone from China at a remarkable price

When the first decent Ultra-Cheap horns turned up on the market a few years ago I already had my eyes on the horizon. I figured that if the Chinese could turn out a respectable alto or tenor sax for around £200 then it shouldn't be long before they got around to producing a similarly cheap baritone.
I'll admit to being a tad impatient - I rang up a couple of importers and asked them when they'd be getting a cheap baritone in. I was quite surprised by the response...quite a few of them felt there wasn't any market for a baritone, though they were quite happy to press ahead with getting soprano saxes in.
"You're mad" I told them "No-one wants a soprano really - I mean, what use are they? In over 30 years of playing no-one's ever rung me up on a Friday night and asked if I can dep on soprano on the Saturday...the soprano is what you buy when you want another horn and don't need an alto or a tenor but can't afford a bari!"

OK, so I'll admit I was slightly biased - but I'll stand by the fact that the baritone is enormous fun. Just about every sax player who has a go on one enjoys the experience - and if they could be bought cheap enough then it's quite likely that just about every sax player would have one. They're useful too, forever popping up in horn sections etc. - and for small ensemble work they make a nice change from the alto or tenor from time to time.
The big problem is the price. A decent student bari comes in at a shade less than £2500, and although used baris can be had from around £700 they're often pretty old and beaten up. Ideally you need to be able to buy a working example for about £500-600, which is pretty much an impulse purchase price to the average multi-sax owning player.

In the meantime, how does £1000 for a baritone grab ya?
Behold - the Gear4Music baritone.
At first sight this baritone appears to be modelled on the Yanagisawa B9930, with its distinctive integral peg (note the stub, just visible below the low C key guard on the bottom bow) - but there are number of features on this horn that aren't found on Yanagisawas but are on Yamahas, which suggests that what we have here is a sort of hybrid between the two brands.
That's no bad thing - for example, some might find the addition of a peg stand useful; there are twin octave key holes on the body; the low C key features a double arm and the low A mechanism features twin arms. In effect then this horn is a Yanagamaha...or a Yamagisahwa (I have a horrible feeling that amalgamating honourable Japanese names in this fashion is probably a social faux pas eclipsed only by flashing your privates at the Pope).
On the down side it has the absurdly small sling ring as found on all the Yanis - and, strangely enough, no top F# key.

The body features all the usual gubbins - detachable bell and top bow, beefy bell to body brace, additional bracing to the top bow and an adjustable thumb hook. Build quality is quite good overall, the solderwork is tidy, the tone holes are level, the pillars are well fitted - and the finish is really pretty good.
As noted on other Ultra-Cheap horns, the bell key guards are on the thin side.

The keywork is well put together too. If there's one thing a baritone needs it's solid keywork. With such large keys and long key barrels there's a tendency for baritone keywork to be a tad spongy and imprecise. Fortunately the G4M has quite stiff keys (as noted on the Walstein - another Chinese horn). This is a boon on a baritone, and it enables far more accurate regulation and balancing of the keywork - which translates into a more reliable and accurate action.

However, the G4M kind of shoots itself in the foot by inaccurate reaming of the pillars. What this means is that the holes in the pillars that the rod screws fit through are ever so slightly too large. This allows the rod screws to flex...and when that happens it affects the regulation of the action. It's not by much, granted, but it's enough for me to have felt it necessary to shim some of the pillars (this was done by carefully soft soldering a very thin brass foil tube into the pillar - it sounds like a bit of a bodge, but as the rods don't move in the pillars there won't be any wear...so it doesn't need to be a particularly 'tidy' job).
The tragedy is that there's no free play on the keywork (so you couldn't simply fit oversized rod screws...unless you were prepared to ream out the key barrels), which indicates well built keys...which are subsequently let down by the shoddy reaming of the pillars.
I would hope that the manufacturers address this issue in time - it's a relatively easy fix and would improve the instrument's quality significantly in the long run.

The main stack keys feature adjusters, which is a very real help when it comes to setting up the action - and the action is powered by stainless steel springs. To be more accurate I suspect the springs aren't so much 'stainless' as just 'not blued steel' (yep, they're just plain steel, and will rust if they get wet). That said, they seem to work OK.
The placement of the keys is fine - I noted no big issues regarding the ergonomics, save for the positioning of the front top F key. A little tweak here could bring the touchpiece more in line with the top B key and make for a swifter transition between the two.
The point screws are of the pseudo type. The keys that use them appear to be well fitted for the time being though, and it's an easy enough job to replace them as and when the action wears.
I say 'as and when' because unlike the altos and tenors that come in at around the £200 mark, these baritones are unlikely to be considered 'disposable'. It would make sense to carry out regular maintenance on these horns - it might even be worth contemplating the price or a repad one day if the retail price doesn't dip much lower than it currently is.

The setup was good, with the action being really quite well adjusted in terms of key height. Likewise the spring tension - though I did find I had to increase the strength on a couple of the lower keys. The pads are of reasonable quality - typically inclined to be a tad sticky initially (cigarette lighter fluid will sort this) - and surprisingly well seated.

I mentioned this baritone had a peg stand - and here it is.
As can be seen, it's quite a simple affair - but nonetheless sturdy.
The idea of the device is to provide support for the baritone when the player is using the sax in a seated position.
I had a go at this but found it a bit disconcerting, as though the bari was caught on something. Because of the angles involved the peg doesn't take all of the weight, but it does make a fair bit of difference as it means the sling (or neckstrap) only has to support the forward weight of the bari and not the downward weight too.
I can see some players finding this a real advantage.
One point to note is that the peg may not be compatible with your saxophone stand - some stands leave the bottom bow quite close to the floor and there might not be enough height to accommodate the peg.

Rounding off the package is a decent semi-soft case (it even has wheels!), which does a pretty good job of balancing the need for protection without being overly weighty - and there's plenty of compartment space for all the bits and bobs that bari players seem to accumulate.

Tonewise the G4M is typical of a contemporary baritone. It tends towards the bright, which gives it a punchy and clean tone - but it's not so bright as to be brash and shouty. Such baritones respond well to a wide variety of mouthpieces, so it wouldn't be at all difficult to warm the tone up with the right choice of piece. A basic Yamaha 5C piece imparted a lovely richness to the tone without removing the crispness of attack. The response is very good, and even quite rapid passages presented the horn with no problems relating to definition and clarity.
It's quite even across the range - I only noted only a very slight muting to the top G, which can be a problem on many baritones, and that suggests to me that the twin octave vents on the body are helping to lift the notes from mid D to G quite nicely. The only other point worthy of mention is that I felt the mid/low D to be a teeny bit louder than its surrounding notes...but that's something your embouchure would soon accommodate automatically.
Tuning is excellent across the board, no problems at all - even the fake-fingered top F# hit the meter dead centre.

Just for fun I recorded a short sample of me bimbling about on this bari. The sound quality isn't fantastic - I just used the computer's mic - but it'll give you a rough idea of how the horn sounds.
Incidentally, although I've sorted the play in the pillars on the upper stack on this horn, the lower stack remains to be done...and you can hear that it doesn't appear to affect the playability. For equipment geeks the mouthpiece used is a 70's ebonite Berg Larsen of unknown lay (probably a 100/2, judging by the brightness) with a Rico Plasticover 4 reed.
*(Note: I had an email from a colleague called Nitai who noted that the sample is a semitone flat! I checked the Berg Larsen mouthpiece against the one I use for gigging, and the Yamaha 5C I used for the review, and sure enough it's half a tone flat. This is because the Larsen will only fit halfway up the cork and has a longer shank than the other two pieces - so that low A at the end is actually an Ab! As it's only a simple sample to demonstrate the tone I shan't bother to change it in a hurry - but I'm glad it wasn't played against an accompaniment...).

As luck would have it I had a client bring in a Yanagisawa 901 bari at the time I was reviewing the G4M horn, so we did a side-by-side test with the two baris. The Yani clearly has a better build quality, and consequently the action feels that little bit slicker under the fingers - although the G4M positively trounces the Yani with regard to the low A mechanism. I've mentioned the sponginess of the Yani's low A mech in its review, and the stiff keywork of the G4M coupled with the double arm arrangement (seen here on the right) of the low A mech puts it some considerable distance ahead on this point.
As far as I'm aware there are currently only three designs of low A mech on the market (on Chinese horns, at least). The Yani mech is similar to the Yamaha (and G4M) mech, but only has one arm coming off the touchpiece - the other design features a single arm that goes around the rear of the instrument. This design is perhaps just slightly better than the Yani design, but it's still nowhere near as positive as that on the Yamaha.
It's worth noting that this key layout can be seen on other brands of Chinese baritone saxes, and that they all appear to be very similar horns - if not exactly the same.

In terms of key layout there's little to choose between them, both horns felt comfortable under the fingers.
As regards tone there's a difference, though it's not as much as perhaps it ought to be. The Yani is more refined and rounded - though both horns blow easily. As per the comparison with the Yanagisawa tenor and the Walstein, the Yani has a more focussed and smooth top end...but that's using the same mouthpiece for each horn. If you were to use a slightly more open piece on the G4M you'd bring a little extra roundness to the top end, thus reducing the difference between the two horns.

All in all a pretty impressive performance for the G4M bari, especially given that it's a whopping great £2600 cheaper!

All things considered I would say that if you buy one of these baritones it would be very well worth having it professionally tweaked. It used to be that this was my standard advice for the Chinese altos and tenors, but the build quality on these has, in general, improved considerably - you're quite likely to find that most of these horns will work straight out of the box.
To be sure, the baritones probably will too as they're very forgiving when it comes to anomalies in the action - but the price of a proper setup will pay huge dividends in terms of performance here, and there's really no reason why a baritone should feel clunky and spongy. As regards the play in the pillars I would say it would cost around £60 to sort it out once and for all if you feel it matters to you.
As it stands the nearest competitor to the G4M bari is the Jupiter, at around £2500. These are decent enough horns for the price...or at least they were; aside from the action issues noted on the G4M bari it's at least equal to the Jupiter, and arguably better in playability terms. The price is the clincher though...at a mere £1000 it's quite simply an outrageous bargain.

Update May 2019:

This baritone is ten years younger than the Gear4Music example above and the only real difference is that it's now branded with Gear4Music's own brand name - Rosedale.
In every other respect it's identical, at least as far as the eye can see. As such, the technical features described on the horn above apply equally to this model - so this update will be merely an overview of any changes in build quality in the last ten years.

Or mostly identical. This model features a top F# key, and it looks like the sling ring is a little bit larger (20/13). The side F# key has an oval pearled touchpiece rather than a rectangular bar and the side Bb/C keys have an open fork connector rather than the closed one of the example above.
I may well have missed a few other small details - bit that's rather the point...they'll be small details rather than any substantial changes.

There's been some improvement to the overall build quality because I noted surprisingly little evidence of play in the keywork.
The older example suffered from overdrilled pillars, which allowed the rod screws to wobble (and thus the keys). This example fared much better - and while it wasn't perfect it was at least as good as the average student horn from Taiwan.
There were a few exceptions though; the front top F touchpiece had a slightly overdrilled pillar - but what I initially thought was severe barrel play on the palm keys turned out to be down to the rod screws not being fully screwed home. Phew.

There was also quite a lot of play in the octave mech. This isn't at all uncommon on Ultra-Cheap horns, and even less so on baritones.
Most of the play is at the swivel arm tips, though there's still some on the central pivot. You can see that there's quite a lot of movement in the mech without the octave key pad moving significantly - which corresponds to about 5mm of downward movement on the thumb key before the mech begins to move the octave key pad. That's quite a lot of free play (or lost motion) even for a large horn.
Fortunately the rest of the mech is reasonably tight, which means that it can be greatly improved by a few relatively simple tweaks. In this instance I simply fitted the tips of the swivel arm with heatshrink tubes - which takes up the free play and helps to quieten an otherwise rattly mech.
I didn't do anything about the play in the central pivot because you can easily overdo it on cheap octave mechs - they're rarely made that accurately and will quickly bind up if there isn't at least a small amount of slop in them to take up the discrepancies in the key geometry.

The point screw action wasn't bad at all, considering pseudo points have been used.
A handful of keys had slight wobbles on them, but again these were no worse than the sort of play I've seen on many Mauriats - and while I might have frowned a bit (can't help it), there wasn't anything that was critical enough to require immediate attention. I sorted it anyway (can't help it, again).

I found a nice Aardvark too, on the top D key.
Whoever put this horn together got the angle of the top bow slightly wrong, so that the top of the arch on the D key arm hits the bow tube. This makes a very satisfying clunk, and limits the opening height of the key....so you get a lot of noise and a slightly flat top D into the bargain.

I've seen this before on cheap baritones, and while I wouldn't say it's endemic it's certainly something to watch out for.
It's easy enough to correct...you just have to file a bit off the key arm. It's not a problem - there's plenty of metal to spare, and it saves you the very real (and expensive) chore of trying to adjust the angle of the top bow.
If you do it neatly and finish it with a chamfer and a spot of clear lacquer you'll be hard put to spot it had ever been tweaked.

In spite of these faults I'd still consider it an improvement over the earlier examples I've seen, though this gain was rather offset by some problematical toneholes.

While I'm usually happy to recommend Ultra-Cheap baritones if you're on a tight budget, I always do so with the proviso that you'll need to spend a little bit more to have them tweaked - and one of the most cost-effective tweaks is to have the bell key toneholes levelled (low A to low Eb).
These are often the worst culprits for warps, and having them levelled can make a very big difference to the playability of the horn.
The Rosedale had moderate warps on all these toneholes, but the low A, Bb and B had distinct 'notches' in their lower side. These notches are too small and well-defined to be caused by distortions in the body tube - and are usually caused by someone being a bit heavy-handed with a buffing wheel. In order words the notches have been ground out of the tonehole walls.
You can persuade a pad to cope with a large, long warp (at least for a while) but getting one to accommodate a sharper dip is a very different matter, and you'll always be better off addressing the cause of the problem rather than trying to work around it.
The rest of the toneholes weren't too bad - not perfect by any means, but within expectations for such a cheap horn. On the plus side the rims were reasonably well finished.

The setup was OK. This horn's seen a year or so of use and seemed to be standing up to it pretty well. A few corks had gone west, some of the pads had swelled a little and the keywork was running a bit short of oil. Nothing very serious.
The supplied case is the same - a dirty great box-style case with a zippered lid. It's good enough, provided you don't knock it about too much - and since the original review was published it's become clear that the wheels on the case aren't screwed into anything substantial enough to prevent them being knocked off if you drag the case over anything much rougher than a dancefloor. And the zip fasteners will break (you can buy repair kits off ebay, though I've not yet tried one).

In terms of playability this horn presented itself as a little darker and more laid back than the example above. As luck would have it I had a busy week for baritones and was able to compare this model with an early Gear4Music, a John Packer JP044 (MkII) and an old Bauhaus Walstein. The old Gear4Music was the punchiest of the lot, with quite a crisp tone and lots of attack - and the Bauhaus was by far the richest and most expressive. The John Packer sat more or less in the middle - and on first trying the Rosedale when it came in I'd have placed it at the back of the pack. However, once it had been tweaked it squared up quite nicely to the John Packer. From a personal perspective I preferred the cut and clarity of the old Gear4Music, but that would have been in the context of using it in a soul/blues band horn section...where the extra grunt would come in handy. For more 'exposed' baritone work I'd go for the Bauhaus Walstein - but both the John Packer and the Rosedale do well as all-rounders.
I suspect that if you could blag another crook you'd probably find you could change the response quite dramatically.

So, some plusses and minuses for the Rosedale compared to the Gear4Music, but on the whole I'd say there'd been a small net gain in build quality. With that said, ten years have gone by and the asking price hasn't gone up that much...so it's probably slightly better value for money than it used to be.
The one caveat is that Ultra-Cheap horns can be very variable - both in terms of one example to the next and in one batch to the next - so the onus is on the buyer to check for issues as soon as possible after purchase.
I cannot stress how important this is, especially for a horn that, while still relatively cheap, costs over a grand. For example - whilst writing this update I heard from a player who bought a Rosedale baritone and was advised by his repairer to send it back due to excess play in the pillars - which he wisely did. Some issues will be reasonably cheap to sort out, other rather less so - so it pays to consider a post-purchase checkover as something of a necessity.
But if you get lucky, and/or you fork out for a proper set up, the Rosedale doesn't do a bad job at all.