Alright.... spoiler warning, here is the answer to the sax blind test!
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A - BetterSax
B - Mendini

For those who were wrong, it's probably because of my poor playing and microphone quality more so than you hearing anything incorrectly! haha

Jay is indeed a professional saxophone player, but I suspect the many years he spent working as a horn tech was even more important when he was working with an overseas manufacturer to create the best sax for the money. BTW, just because a saxophone is leaking doesn't mean that it needs a new pad. It's possible, but it's often just due to bent or worn metal parts no longer fitting the same way and the horn just needs some adjustment to allow the pad to seat (and seal) perfectly over the tone hole. Most horn techs won't charge you very much for a simple adjustment. A full repad would cost you much more than you paid for the Amazon special.

No white gloves😂😂🎉🎉

Thinking back to when Jay was developing the Better Sax, one of the key factors was that it should work out of the box without the player having to do a pile of adjustments or minor repairs.

the 130-350 sax level fits neatly into this frame:
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."
Sam Vimes' theory of socioeconomic unfairness, from Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett

cant wait till the day i see a bari sax- PLEASE. probably a temu video would be super cool lol.  Edit- Maybe not temu ever since the bassoon incident but yk

Your purple horn has air leaks.  That’s why it warbles (as if you didn’t already know)

They both sound the same after being mashed through the youtube audio algorithm, I'd go for the purple one, because it's purple :)

The underslung crook key design is based on Yanagisawa saxes. I know someone with one of these altos (which has 'Better Sax by Bundy' stamped on the bell) who bought it to use at wedding dos and live DJ gigs as he didn't have an alto after leaving the RM band service. Out the box it needed the ventings opened up in the RH main action as they were a bit on the low side, but for a Chinese sax, it's far better built and set up compared to other Chinese saxes. Once set up, it came to life.

Then later on he brought it back in as someone booted it off its stand at a wedding do. It was smashed in at the top end of the body with the pillars pushed in and the main body tube was also banana-shaped as a result. I removed the socket, the pillars at the top end and lower 8ve pip as well as the bell so I could get a body mandrel inside it. The metal the body tube is made from is fairly thin gauge brass, so it didn't take much effort to get it all straightened out. Then soldered it all back together again and the lacquer didn't even get burnt in the process which was a bonus. Definitely far easier to work on than a Mauriat (Taiwanese) or Bauhaus-Walstein (Chinese) or even a modern Selmer for that matter.

My student saxophone is a bettersax and is only 600 dollars. It's one of the best saxophones I've honestly ever seen. 😂😂😂

Small note:

In Europe the Yamaha student model costs around 990€, so both the better sax and the Yamaha are in the same price bracket.
Not sure why a student horn is priced at 2900$ in the us.
No wonder the better sax classic is so popular in the united states

@16:36 you say 'add some flames'...i laughed b/c my Soprano, that i got in 2003 ish, HAS FLAMES! It's from the former Woodwind and Brasswind, their brand...it's blueish purple and flames around the bell.

I really appreciate how much you don’t stress about getting the better sax, and instead leave more general complaints for both. Obviously the better sax is better, but if the only way you can afford a sax is to get a cheap one, then it’s better to get a cheap one just so you actually start playing. The lower the entry barrier the better.
I especially love your informed view as a band directors, it feels like you are talking straight to the parents of soon-to-be band kids. Keep up the good work! I know my parents were super overwhelmed when they got me my sax as a kid, and ended up shelling out more than they probably had to without really knowing what they were getting.

if i wouldnt have bougt a hurdy gurdy 2 months ago i would buy the better sax because its amazing!

Jay is also an expert sax mechanic so no surprise there.
The Amazon sax has warble. Low c leaking? A cheap leak light will show you. Not too hard of a fix. Once fixed a good player can make some good sound with it. The better Sax machine has bell adjustment screws ( good for long term maintenance) and nice engraving. You have to go all the way up to a Yamaha YAS480 before you get that. Jay’s machine is pre setup by a pro. Critical as you mentioned.
Cool video. Keep up the good work. You know music theory. You could become a good saxophone player.

4:36 most definitely agree. Back when I had a hard case, my hands would start to hurt because of the pressure from the plastic handle if I'd held it for too long (especially when I was just starting out). Once I upgraded my horn, I got a new soft case with it. It has amazing handles with padding as well - Yamaha makes some great cases lol
Anyways, I just think it's a great thing that they're giving beginners more ways to carry it

For the neck strap, the easiest way to pad them is to get a washcloth or something similar and wrap it around the strap.  You can sew it, use a couple safety pins, tape it, or just leave it loose (best so you can wash it every now and then).  Back when I was in school, I had an old, corded neck strap with pleather for the neck area.  As it started to crack and become uncomfortable, I wrapped it in a white washcloth.  It wasn't pretty, but it was more comfortable than before!

Flames on a sax bell would be EPIC

I've been waiting for you to review this 🎉🎉🎉

The warble on the low notes of your Mendini/Cecilio alto is most likely down to the bore taper being too wide at the top end - many people blame low note warbles on leaks, but that's not the case. You can try a slightly softer reed to see if that helps, but I doubt it'll do much.

There's no real fix for a bore taper problem that causes the low notes to bubble (and cheap oboes with too wide top joint bores also suffer this exact same problem) besides major surgery on the body tube to correct it for a permanent fix, or you could try hanging a length of thin electrical wire inside the crook (ideally it should be a tapered rod, relative to the bore taper) with the top end of the bare wire bent over the crook cork and gripped by the mouthpiece (or under a piece of tape or paper over it and the cork).

Older Jupiter altos from the '80s suffered with that too as well as old DDR-era B&S altos and several older sopranos with too wide a bore taper at the top end, including Selmer SA80II sopranos. On Yanagisawas you can see a brass insert soldered into the top end or the crook hidden underneath the mouthpiece or crook cork which many Yanagisawa copies (both Taiwanese and Chinese) also have.