Let’s begin with the mouthpiece and reeds. A couple of good and reliable brand name
mouthpieces for under $50.00 are the Graftonite made by Rico, and the Morgan student series
mouthpieces. As for reeds, Rico makes an inexpensive one and I would suggest a medium
strength; the reed may be labeled as Med, or with a number 2 or 3. You don’t want to have to
blow excessively hard to get a sound but instead have a reed that lets you produce a sound
fairly easily from the lowest note on the horn to the highest. Some reeds play better than others
so you need to experiment a little to find a good reed.

Saxophones

There are many fine instruments and there are a lot of not so good
ones so you need to take some time to have an instrument examined. I have found that the
Yamaha student line is a consistently good instrument and one of the least expensive.

If you already own an instrument some of the things to look for to keep it in good repair are:

  1.Check the pads to see if they’re cracked. The pad material should be soft enough to
    form a good seal over the tone hole.
  2.The pads should not be discolored, but instead should be pretty much the same color
    overall.
  3.Check all the screws on the horn and make sure they are tight. Be careful and don’t over
    tighten.
  4.Swab out the mouthpiece, neck, and horn at least once a week. You can purchase an
    inexpensive swab from your local music dealer or make your own.

One last tip is to have someone who knows how to play the saxophone check out the
instrument for you. One of the most important things I’ve learned through the years is to check
the intonation of the instrument , to make sure it can be played in tune. This relates to how the
instrument was originally manufactured. If a horn wasn’t made right you might not be able to
play some notes in tune no matter how hard you try. The ideal way to check a horn out is to
start at the middle of the horn on a concert Bb, and using an electronic tuner play each note
down to the lowest note and then work your way up to the highest. Each note will be out of
tune somewhat and you will need to experiment with bringing it in tune which will take practice.
What you need to look out for are notes that are excessively out of tune, indicating that you
might not want to purchase this instrument.