Buying a soprano saxophone for my 12 yr old son.?

Question

I want a quality horn at a decent price. Jupiter brand??? Or should I stick with the big 4? What about woodwind and brasswinds store brand? They have a semi curved model that is intriguing. Should I stick with the straight soprano or the semicurved? My price range is 6-1200. Thanks for the advice!!!

Answer 1

You might want to ask this to any professionals, as in the music career. I suggest you to go to the shop and ask it there.

Answer 2

Is your son a serious sax student already? and this will be an additional horn?.. or is this his first horn.. I'm just curious as to what the motivation is here... if he's new to saxophone, I would not recommend starting out on Soprano.  

Soprano saxes are more difficult to play well than alto or tenor.  Sopranos are very prone to have lots of intonation issues.  Unfortunately, you can't really sacrifice quality for price on a soprano, its just asking for trouble, and lots of frustration in sound and intonation from the user.

I would stay away from all cheap brands.

You can use the "intermediate/student" models from the big 4, in addition, I've seen good things out of the Cannonball brand, and many people like older models of LaSax, if you find one of the older models used.  Stay away from all the ebay Chinese off brands.. these are pure junk.

Straight/Curved-   I would recommend straight, again, overall its going to be easier to play well.  Curved are more difficult from an intonation standpoint.  If you can get a double neck that's better, and that's enough choice.  2 necks, one is straight, the second is slightly crooked.  

Prowinds has an intermediate Keilworth for around $1000, but I've been hearing issues with service from Prowinds, particularly in handling of returns

Woodwind brand?.. probably not,   and also WWandBW has been having a lot of issues with delivery/instock issues with merchandise as of late. I used to love that store, and bought 2 pro Yani's from them, but for the past year or two they have been really lacking.  

Some good online alternatives that know their stuff about saxophones, and are good to deal with are;

USAHorn

Robertoswinds

Fred Weiner