Here is a vintage conn tenor so nice that it literally could not be manufactured today. Nobody engraves like this on instruments anymore and nobody offers a burnished gold finish, nor would the labor be available to do it even if you wanted it done. It's a thick layer of real gold all over the instrument, and it's pretty wild that anyone ever did this. This is a Conn New Wonder II tenor from 1929 that has my favorite engraving pattern that Conn offered - an old castle on a hill - reminds me of the part of Germany along the Rhine where such castles watched each stretch of the river. It's such a beautiful instrument, and the late New Wonder II tenors also have just about the biggest sound of any tenor ever made. My previous assistant who plays big band tenor ended up with two of these after hanging around GetASax for a few years, and he just sounds amazing on them. One was gold just like this. I'm not sure who did the overhaul, but it looks like Pisoni Italian leather pads and the TenorMadness reusable slightly domed brass resonators that I would have picked for this if I had been getting it overhauled myself for GetASax. The only flaw on this horn is the neck had been pulled down in the past. I sent it to Aaron Barnard for repair, and it will come back soon and I'll post neck photos, but it was a pretty bad pull down and will probably get annealed to un-work-harden the brass on the sides. Probably this was the result of decades of small flexing of the neck. My guess is the original owner always adjusted the mouthpiece tuning while the neck was on the horn, and it just flexed ever so slightly each time. Anyway, the repair at Aaron should get this all fixed up and the horn will be ready for its next 100 years of life.
