Antigua Tenor Saxophone

This Antigua saxophone came in for a standard play condition. I found this instrument particularly difficult to do well, as this was another instrument made of soft brass and seemingly poor pads.

I am used to finding the brass to be too soft to work with but I actually found the pads incredibly finicky and unwilling to take a deeper seat to accommodate the tone holes on this. I levelled one tone hole to see if that was the major culprit, but even this with adjusting the original pad would not create a much better seat. I can not say what the reason for this was, it readily accepted my new Ferree’s pads in the few places I needed to replace them.

Looking into these saxophones further tells me that some people actually think they are okay, but I found them exceptionally finicky to work with. During a fairly surface play test I found that things sounded basically fine. I did not do any deep testing of intonation or tone (I tested with the plastic reed I had on my mouthpiece already).