My new King Super 20
Monday, March 17th, 2008A few years ago I finally bought a decent tenor sax. I settled on what I felt was a good compromise between quality, price and performance with this Yamaha YTS-61, circa 1970, that was being sold from Peter Ponzol’s personal collection. I was very happy with the horn and the price I paid for it. It is certainly a beautiful looking sax. With 98% of it’s original lacquer, it’s definitely aging better than I am (our birthdays are only a year apart).
Still, after a few years of steady practice and play, I discovered a longing for a horn with a little faster key work and a quicker, more “open blowing” tone with less resistance.
Initially, I turned to Roscoe Mitchell’s horn of choice, the Selmer Super Action 80 Series II, but upon actually testing, I found it didn’t quite do it for me. Selmers are great and they retain their value, but all the Selmers I tested, including the Reference 54 and Reference 36, didn’t have the distinctive sound and feel I had in mind.
So I kept looking.
My next source of inspiration was from my good friend and pro saxophonist, Eric Koppa. He worked for a number of years at The Saxophone Shop in Evanston, Illinois and offered very candid advice, though admittedly biased toward his own taste. He played a Yamaha YTS-61 tenor in college (one of the influences in my purchase of the same horn). Later, after years of trying various horns that moved through the saxophone shop, he decided the King tenors were, well…the King of the Saxophones. Eric found a nice King Super-sonic 20 that is his current main tenor and he loves it.
Admittedly, I had never really heard much about the King line of horns or the H.W. White Company from Cleveland, Ohio, but after reading about the history of the Super 20 and their appeal to jazz and R&B horn players, I was intrigued.
Eric and I made a run to South Bend, Indiana to spend a day at the Woodwind & Brasswind where we could try horns and mouthpieces. The night before driving there, I play tested Eric’s Super-sonic and was immediately impressed. I could understand what all the hype was about. The horn sounded great and had an effortless tone. On top of that, the key work was tight and speedy. It really was nice! The next day when I play tested other Selmers and Yamahas, but none could compete with the King, except perhaps Yamaha’s Custom Z, which was the only new model tenor I tried that I really felt was in the ballpark.
Before embarking on this trip, I was still leaning toward a Selmer, but a phone conversation with Eric sent me looking around eBay for a King Super 20. Sure enough, I found one on auction that ended later on the evening after our trip to South Bend. I tested the others, and like I said, none of them really impressed me like Eric’s King Super-sonic 20. When Eric looked at the horn on auction, he said, “Bryan, that’s the horn I would get. I’m telling you, it’s going to be better than 95% of any other horns out there.”
Well, with that endorsement, how could I resist? I ended up pulling the trigger on my own King Super 20, and boy, does it have a nice sound! It’s an older horn, circa 1961, and has some intonation challenges in the upper register, but what it gives in intonation, it makes up for in quality of sound, fullness and distinctive character. I’ll add photos soon.
It really is a top-shelf professional horn that competes with Mark VI Selmers of the same period. Maybe that’s why Charlie Parker and “Cannonball” Adderley played a King Super 20 alto?
Here is a nice review by Stephen Howard (English woodwind expert repairman and saxophonist) of a later-model Super 20. Despite mine being 20 years older, his review is spot-on with my early impressions of the horn I just purchased.
So if you’re still reading and you’re a half-bit interested in hearing this horn that was described on eBay as “guaranteed to ROAST,” then pop on down to Madison’s Downtown tonight. You can hear the Super 20 as I take it on its first full-blown run with the Clyde Stubblefield Show!
