Hi Jeff,
It’s a straight Soprano, I tried a curved Soprano and hated it; felt way too small. The straight model felt much better to me ergonomically. I didn’t buy an expensive Soprano–even though it’s a Selmer, it would be considered a Student/Intermediate model; cost me about $800–in the world of Selmer Saxophones it’s a very good, solid Soprano for a student-model price. Another way to think of it would be to think of the equivalent to a Selmer Bundy Tenor SAx, a Yamaha YAS-23 Tenor Sax: good, solid Tenor Saxophones without costing loads of $. Pair them up with a high-quality MP/reed and you’re good to go for a long time to come; the rest of it is up to me and my own playing. It will be a few months before I upload anything on Soprano because I got to learn at least a couple of songs and as with anything new it takes a little practice–remember our first attempt of even just blowing a simple note? But like Johnny says in the video below, it just takes practice. I tried a Soprano a few months ago and loved it. I do plan on making regular use of it for sure, but I don’t plan on playing everything I know on it. I got it for certain style/types of music. To me, there’s things that sound good on the Alto, Tenor & Soprano and above all it’s just about having fun–that means different things to different people. I haven’t had the chance to check out the St.Louis Blues version yet, have had a lot going on locally with the Blues Society every week plus meeting with my Instructor every Monday and getting this Moondance Improvisation assignment that has to be ready by April 25th…thanks for the reminder! 🙂 I’ll check it out for sure later today before I forget LOL