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C Melody Saxophone Forum / Neck Straight versus Curved / Mystery neck

JohnF User ID: 1439244

Sep 28th 1:37 PM I recently purchased a Conn 14M(1956) alto sax from E-bay and it came with a neck that looks like a tenor neck but actually is slightly smaller at the neck clamp than the stock alto neck(.960"O.D. at the clamp and .510"I.D. at the mouthpiece). It might be nickle plated, as is the overslung octave key, but doesn't respond well to polish. The body finish is dull and lackluster(and darker in tone) compared to the octave key which definitely looks like nickle. I've tried Tarn-X(TM)too, just to see if it might respond like silver(which it didn't). It seems to be rather thinly plated and is not ferrous. Could it belong to some make of C Tenor? Thanks for the help. -JF

JohnF User ID: 1439244

Sep 29th 10:29 AM Well, I found a good resemblance of this neck at saxpics.com under the Buescher True Tone C Tenor section(ref: the photo with the S/N 58309). The reason I think I was having so much difficulty in determining the proper finish for this piece was due to the fact that it had been previously lacquered. I believe they refer to the original finish as silver gilding. That is, a thin layer of silver is plated onto the piece, then it is lacquer with a yellow or gold lacquer. There are some small spots of what I finally determined to be remnants of said lacquer(the lacquer is 99.995% gone). If anyone has any chronological info on this type of finish please let me know. Thanks. -JF