Pics of my new Selmer Soprano

[Michael Bishop]

My Selmer Soprano arrived this morning; the projection is just beautiful 🙂 I put on the stock that comes with the Sax when you buy it and popped the Altissimo notes right out, so I guess that’s a good sign 🙂 I have a Vandoren V16 MP for this Sax, but the ligature that came with the stock MP didn’t fit because that MP was too big. I have a ligature coming for it in a week or so. The rest of my home recording stuff arrived today too, so it was a busy day…and a good one at that! 🙂

[john]

very nice Michael….you got altissimo on the soprano!!??

[Michael Bishop]

Yeah, I know that’s little crazy on the Soprano…but I did 🙂 I’m not sure how often I’ll actually use them in a song, maybe to throw in as an ‘effect’ or something here and there while Improvising. I started working on your tune of “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” on the Soprano…Love it! 🙂 When I get my ligature in for the Vandoren V16 MP I’m planning on using with this Soprano then I’ll do a demo with it and hit a few Altissimo notes. 🙂 I need a few days or so to experiment with the Interface for the mics that arrived too, so it’s all good timing.

[Anonymous]

Hi Michael, she does look beautiful. Can you take a few pictures from the top, side, and one to show us the engraving pattern?
It took me a while to figure out your third picture’s angle, then I realised that the ‘Selmer’ name was on the thumb rest.

I wish we could buy those quality saxes here at a reasonable price.
Yamaha products in South Africa also sell at 2x the price of American music shops. 🙁

Enjoy your new voice.

[Anonymous]

Very Nice Michael – looking forward to hearing what it sounds like and now you’ve got a decent recording setup, theres no excuses for not dazzling us with some superb performances! Enjoy🎷

[William Cingolani]

Nice horn

[Michael Bishop]

Thanks much guys 🙂 Everyone here is so fantastic, that’s one of the things that really stands out on Johnny’s site, great community support. @ Jeff: Where do you live? I got my Soprano online from Sax.Co.Uk, great people and can ship anywhere in the world. It’s the Selmer Liberty Soprano, which would be like a Selmer Bundy Tenor, a Yamaha YAS-23, etc. I put a link for you below this comment I direct to you. I wanted a Trevor James Soprano and would have bought it through the dealers here in the US where I got my Tenor/Alto from last year @ Massullo music–awesome people at Massullo Music–but the company of Trevor James told me they’re totally overhauling their Sopranos and it was only in the developmental stages right now, so my next choice was Selmer. This one cost what would be equivalent to $800 US dollars, a superb deal when it comes to a Selmer Sax–as you probably know Selmers can be very expensive. Pair it up with a high-quality MP/reed and you’re good to go for a long time to come…this Soprano could have easily sold for much, much more. Starting to play Soprano myself, I wouldn’t recommend someone whose just learning to play the Saxophone to start learning on the Soprano, the higher notes require much more air support and a good embouchure to hit–even more so than Alto or Tenor. But if you’ve been playing for a couple of years or so, with a little bit of work you should be able to get over the challenges that it presents; each Sax has it’s own unique challenges. I don’t plan on making it my main go-to Sax, but there’s loads of stuff I plan on doing with it so it will get used regularly for sure….I, personally, am glad I got a Soprano 🙂 Like Johnny said it all comes down to fun and if we have fun playing it, then get one. Sorry about the poor quality of pics as I was near my bedroom window and light was coming through,plus the Sax sitting on that red-colored towel doesn’t help any. Here’s the link that shows the Sax with much better looking pics than I could post LOL http://www.sax.co.uk/selmer-usa-liberty-soprano-saxophone-gold-brass.ir

@ Sxpoet: I heard your recordings on Soundcloud that you did, very nice! 🙂 What mic/Interface did you settle on? Today was my first day that I got to start experimenting with the Shure SM-57 mic today with the interface…what a difference and a relief 🙂 The Shure SM-57 is an AWESOME mic. Just be careful with this model because they’re in such high demand and with that comes a lot of people producing knock off-fraud models, they’re all over the place on ebay. So I didn’t mess around and went through an Authorized dealer. This is the one thing I’ve sorely needed to have resolved as I have stuff of Johnny’s I’ve held back from uploading because of it. Over the next few days I’ll start experiment with the Apex Ribbon mic and then experiment with mixing the 2 together like I talked about before. Ribbon Mics are fantastic for recording ballads, etc.. Using this interface in conjunction with high-quality mics is “unchartered territory” for me, it’s all a brand new experience so I need a little time to experiment with the variables. It’s good timing too because our member Kevin graciously stepped up to the plate and is widening the tip opening up my Vandoren T95 MP for Tenor a little bit more. My Instructor has me using Vandoren and it was a smart move on his part, but I needed just a little bit more “bite” from this MP and he have me his approval to open it up slightly. As soon as I get it back from Kevin I’ll start doing stuff thereafter. I could do some Alto stuff first, it’s just that I had this fun, fun project done for the song below of David Rose and his Orchestra “The Stripper”. Using the Green Screen, I created a mini-video to show behind me on video while playing the song….given the title of the song/kind of music being played, use your imagination for the what kind of mini-video I created, just a little bit on the “Raunchy” side 🙂 Kevin is very, very tentative to detail and his work on MPs is far superior to other folks I’ve met so far. His knowledge of working on MPs runs deep and it shocked me…if I had known before I would have been calling him to do some work for me a long time ago! More importantly, Kevin is just a great guy, very sincere and genuine person.

[jake]

Very sweet looking sax there!! I use a Vandoren V16 on my soprano, very nice MP. I pair it up with Vandoren ZZ reeds. The Java Greens should be a nice match with that MP.

[Michael Bishop]

Hey Jake, that’s something that you mentioned the Java Green reeds 🙂 I was using Rigotti Gold reeds as you know, have been using them every since I used to play the Amazon Guardala (you turned me on to them, great reeds). But with the Vandoren line of MPs, as well as Claude Lakeys, the Rigotti reeds were coming across as slightly ‘thin’ sounding. They’re fantastic with metal MPs and if I were playing something like a Guardala, there’s no question I would use them. But looking at these reeds v.s. the Java Greens, the Javas have a little bit more width and not quite as elongated as the Rigottis, which made me think they would be better for these Vandoren MPs—these Vandoren MPs are more broad, have more width than other Metal Mps. So for Tenor, I put on a 2.5 Java Green with the Claude Lakey 8* because Claude Lakeys MPs are very broad too…the difference was light night and day. Same thing on the Alto with the Jumbo Java. So for Soprano I didn’t mess around and just bought Java Green reeds for them, sounds fantastic 🙂 Kevin has my Vandoren Jumbo Java for Tenor right now, he’s opening the tip opening up slightly more, the width of this MP is like the Claude Lakeys. When we think about it, it only makes sense to use the Javas with these Vandoren line of MPs that I’m using these days, both are made by Vandoren so you know they’re compatible. The one thing we take away from this is that, sometimes, the answer we’re looking for could be in a simple box of reeds! 🙂 Lots of times we wanna know what kind of MP someone is using, etc., but how often do we think about our reeds in the same way? The right reed for the MP we’re using can make all the difference in the world 🙂

[Anonymous]

Gosh Michael, that price is low compared to what we are paying here. That price for the Selmer is about R14 000, where I paid R6 000 for my second hand Soprano! The Jupiter Soprano sells for around R21 000 here and a good model Selmer Tenor is well over R100 000. I live in South Africa 70km south of Johannesburg.

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