Martin Alto Saxophone Handcraft – 1927

This sax is one of the very finest saxophones ever made by the Martin company, Elkhart, Indiana. Back in the mid 1920’s during the saxophone craze, Martin along with Conn, Buescher, King and Selmer made the worlds top professional saxophones of the era. Today these companies, known as the big 5, are so highly collectible because of how they play. Handmade by the finest skilled craftsmen of all time, the best horns originated anywhere between the 1920’s to the 1950’s.

This sax is a Martin Handcraft and was made in 1927.

A musical instrument company that for many years competed favorably with larger players Conn and Buescher (no relationship to E.F. Martin Guitars). Vintage Martin saxophones are usually identifiable by beveled, soldered-on tone holes, a very ro und tear-drop shaped octave key button, and wide rectangular G# keys (except for the “typewriter” model that experimented with pearls on all of the left pinky keys). Like its competitors, Martin continually introduced improves horns until the 1960’s. Unfortunately an attempted merger with Blessing and Reynolds in 1961 never really worked out; in 1964, Martin was bought out by Wurlitzer. In 1971 the factory closed. Leblanc owns the rights to the Martin name and occasionally makes an instrument labeled as a Martin; however the legacy of Martin engineering has disappeared.