eBay

For sale is a holy grail 1952 Selmer Super Balanced Action Tenor sax in absolutely glorious original lacquer condition!

This beautiful full package SBA has a FULL overhaul & pad job from one of Los Angeles highest end top tier tech that charges quite a pretty penny for his work.

This horn really is the real deal that everyone is out looking for. This horn is undisputed original lacquer with the most desirable highly engraved US engraving pattern. Shortly after this horn the engraving pattern was changed to a much simpler engraving more similar to the early Mark VIs. This horn is just a stunning example of US Selmer engraving Super Balanced Action.

This horn has had every single pad fully replaced and meticulously overhauled. The woodwind tech that worked on this horn has extreme knowledge and reputation for overhauling SBAs of this nature. The tech is obsessed with SBA key heights, venting, and maxing these horns out to there full potential.

The pads on this horn aren’t simply thrown in the horn… Its so important to stress the level of attention, care, detail and insane amount of hours that went into getting this bad boy where it is now.

Work like this is VERY EXPENSIVE. This takes time waiting for the horn to be even started to fixed, then the horn takes a while to be overhauled, then I have to pay WAY TO MUCH MONEY for the 75 hours + that went into this overhaul.

Please understand and respect what this horn has to offer vs some dirty old horn needing extensive overhaul.

Please keep in mind 90% of the SBA horns that are seen sold are all major flawed in many ways. Most are relaq, missing neck, insane amount of damage, requiring a $2500 overhaul, etc etc.

These saxophone really are insanely desirable and hard to find like this. There were some 300,000 Mark VIs made (round number)… Yet there were only some 30,000 SBAs made…

Thats 30,000 including all soprano, alto, tenor, baritone.. Just guesstimating that means there were some 15,000 altos, 10,000 tenors, and 5,000 total soprano & baritones…

Out of those 10,000 tenor horns some insanely high % of all those horns fall under the category of relaq, missing orignal neck, patch or pickup on the neck, missing parts, totally destroyed and brought back with extreme dent work or whatever other various case these fall under….

So all that being said out of the entire world of Selmer collectors are drooling over original lacquer matching serial number SBAs there’s only just a few thousand up for grabs in the entire world….. So many of these original laq SBAs already have homes with players, sitting in collection hiding from the world…These rarely come up.

Some 5 years ago there used to be maybe 20 or 30 of these Tenors on eBay at any given time… Now you see 2 or 3 of these horns pop up at a time… If your in the market for one of these top tier level horns theres just not many options. This is all part of the reason why these are selling for such insane prices. I personally think these SBA prices are just getting started out. A Gibson 1959 Les Paul was only selling for about $30,000 in the early 1990s.. Now they are selling for $350,000!!!

Words are in effable and dont exist to properly explain how playing this horn feels and sounds. These horns have cult following and it all comes down to the combination of how these horns sound in tone, feel in the hands, and allow flexibility while playing.. These horns are loud, powerful, in your face, ballsy YET also sooooooo delicate, flexible, whimsical and lyrical.

This horn is extremely easy to blow and create the pinnacle of sound with just the smallest amount of air blowing over the read being projected into the horn…… OR at the same time its insanely easy to be loud, voicestorous and melt faces.

This horn has that known SBA dark, core, full body, musky sound.. yet this horn also has bright partials and a jumpy flexibility that makes you feel like your on a rollercoaster.

This horn is insanely easy to angle, maneuver and get around the horn jumping from lower octave to top and move around the keywok. The key work is excellent and fits sturdy and strong under the finger. The Oleg bis riser is a huge improvement. As is the Selmer Mark VI style thumb touch!

Local pickup to Los Angeles is highly encouraged! If you are a serious buyer, regardless of where you live local pickup is a great idea! For a horn of this nature at this value its worth flying in from NYC, Japan, Australia. If you are serious either book a flight and come for 24 hours, or a whole vacation around this!

If you are serious about this horn, with a purchase like this at this price please message me before hand and lets talk about all the specifics. I will not be interested in dealing with 0 feedback, any kind of weird customs devaluing or anything like that..

I will ONLY ship within the United States to the exact verified shipping address. If you live in another country and have a friend in the US. Feel free to set your friends address up as your verified shipping address and then talk to me about buying the horn. Then whatever your friend does with the horn is up to you.

Shipping is very expensive on this horn, the sax will be insured for its full value during shipping which will be very expensive at this price.

Selmer Super Balanced Action

1952 build

49xxx

Matching Serial # on Neck

NO Pickups or patches on neck

FULL NEW Overhaul

Oversized Metal Reso’s

American Engraved

High end pads

Oleg F Key Rise Added

Mark VI style black plastic thumb touch added

Case pictured NOT included

LOCAL PICKUP TO LOS ANGELES ENCOURAGED

This is a used, pre owned vintage 65+ year old saxophone. This sax is very expensive yet has its fair share of scratching, dings, dents, flea bites, weld marks, repair marks and overall patina. This sax is loosing its laqcuer so there is patina stretched throughout the horn ranging from light yellow tan to dark reds. This horn has had lots of repairs leavings marks all around.