Hi Jake, on my alto, every note above Mid C is sharper, i have to embouchure down to get them more in tune (i believe Modern Pro sax’s are more even in all the registers compared to student models like mine).

I did read somewhere, that its more common for the mouthpiece to be shoved all the way in than being pulled all the way out. two other things apparantly sax necks are like mouthpieces, changing to a different style neck can give a complete change over, and on the negative side, necks are easily damaged sound wise.

But interesting, like to hear the answer to your question!

Jake, My experience with intonation on my YAS-52 are that the if I’m properly tuned to say an A (concert C), my notes as I go higher gradually get sharper, and my notes below that gradually get flatter. So if I play a song that uses more notes in the 2nd octave I tune to say an C or D, and vice versa if my song uses more of the lower notes. I actually tune predominantly to a C because to my ear lower notes that are played slightly flat are not as glaringly noticeable as high notes that are played sharp. My struggle then is when I try to “lip up” the lower flat pitches, it easily triggers the unwanted overtones!
My Tenor has the same intonation tendency, but is not as out-of-tune at the limits as the Alto.
Glad to hear that a neck change was a noted improvement to your intonation. That gives me hope to find a cure that I haven’t been able to find.
I thought maybe the MP was a likely culprit, but I have had 4-6 different MP’s on the Alto only to find the same thing once the tuner was turned on.

One curious thing that was noticeable more than once- I got one of those reed trimmers, and when a favorite reed got a little corner chip on it, I would trim the reed about 1mm shorter and the intonation was better. That’s not a solution I want to have to use to be more in tune, but it was a curiosity…

Hope more provide there experience with there instrument and setup regarding intonation. I hate not having an instrument(setup) that can be played without having to work so hard with corrective “lip” tuning measures.

OK, i have a problem with my palm key notes being sharp. If i play with yamaha custom 4cm mouthpiece i’m perfect in tune on high D to high F#. But when i play with high baffle mpc i’m sharp as hell up there. No matter what i do i can’t lower pitch on that notes. I can make them even sharpier, but can’t lower them. I know many will say: play with that yamaha mpc, but problem is that yamaha mpc sucks to play. I need to use no.4 reed on that coz it’s so closed. So i would like to stay with high baffle and open mpc, just don’t know how to fix that sharp notes. Any exercises for that?

P.s.: i play tenor sax

Thanks Johnny. Well Regular F fingering is perfect in tune, but If i press low Bb and play overtone F, then that F is sharp. I can now get High notes in tune, but i need huge air pressure and very low pressure on lips, but tone is not really strong and clean then. I’ll kepp practising and see how it will go.

🙂