Hi Neal,

My question is about Taiwan horns. Experienced alto and tenor sax player , have a conn new wonder 2, plays like butter , a yanagisawa 901 , haven’t played it long enough to get a good feeling about it , but it sounds good. All tenors ,

I also have had a Jupiter artist model , made in 2012, an inexpensive sax, good sound and intonation, I guess my question is :

do you know how imports like these last ? Keep it ? Or get rid of it ? Thank you in advance ,
Joe

My response:

I have a Jupiter alto that I got a few years back, one of my teachers when I was a kid also had a Jupiter. They seem to make decent saxophones, not the best in the world, but pretty good. Haven’t noticed that it has more problems than other saxophones I have played.

If it was an import with an unknown brand, I would suspect it a lot more since it wouldn’t have much of a reputation. Or if it actually had a bad reputation.

Pretty much any new sax you buy is going to be an import. They’re not making saxophones in Elkhart Indiana like they used to!

Back in the day though, Japanese products used to have a bad reputation (we’re talking a while ago). I suspect that Chinese horns are also improving. Jupiter has been around for a while. Horns like Cannonball and P. Mauriat are being made in China now too, though not designed there. These days, Japanese horns have become competition for Selmer in my eyes.

If you’re not playing the horn, maybe you want to sell it. But I don’t think it’s going to suddenly fall apart.

-Neal