If you've arrived on this page expecting to find an in-depth discussion around the relative merits of, say, "All The Things You Are" as compared to "Embraceable You" I'm afraid you're in for a very bitter disappointment.
Sorry about that.
No, what I'd like to bang on about - and at some length - is how engineering standards bring reassurance, and perhaps a degree of accountability. Actually, come to think of it - if you can blast your way, convincingly mind, through five choruses of "All The Things You Are" at 300 BPM without coughing, playing more than two Charlie Parker quotes or/and going blue in the face then I reckon accountability and reassurance comes as part of the applause package. Then again, if you've played "Embraceable You" at that tempo I'd respectfully suggest that just because you can do a thing it doesn't mean that you should.

Y'see, I've spent a very great deal of time poking around saxes and other woodwind instruments, and in all that time I've seen a huge variation in the care with which these things are built and assembled. Indeed, I've spoken about it plenty of times in my reviews - but it occurs to me that simply pointing at something and saying "That's not good enough" is perhaps a little bit arbitrary?
OK, sure, my comments are made with the benefit of experience - of having to clean up the mess when things go wrong and of seeing how problems develop down the years - but what makes something 'bad' on one horn and 'OK' on another?
Well, price tends to be a pretty strong factor. If you only spend £300 on a horn then you surely can't expect to find NASA-grade engineering, but at what price can you expect to find it? £1000? £3000? £10,000?? And what exactly is 'NASA-grade engineering'?

And who decides what that is? And if you're thinking "Well, it's NASA, innit - ya daft numpty!" you should know that I'm currently staring somewhat sternly at you over the rim of my glasses...
Reviews from an engineering perspective are pretty hard to find. Whenever I'm looking to buy a new bit of kit, be it a pocket knife, a camera or a washing machine, I do what most people do these days and head off to the internet to find a few reviews. And what I find myself doing is wading though countless posts, articles and videos that tell me little or nothing about how something is put together, how well it performs and how long it's likely to last. And then there's always that nagging doubt that folks are only saying what they've been 'incentivised' to say.
I guess you could say that you can't do much better than to read what folks who've bought these products have to say about them - such as you'd find in the review section in many online stores. I think that's a fair comment, with a couple of provisos. When it comes to something relatively simple like a light fitting or a flip-top bin it works quite well. Naturally you still have to do a bit of sifting, and I dunno about you but I tend to head straight for the one to three star reviews before looking at the more positive ones - because this is where you really get to see what might go wrong.
But you still have to apply a few filters. Stuff like "Arrived dented" doesn't tell you much...unless it's a common theme, and nor does "It didn't work for me" when there's no explanation as to why. "Broke after two weeks" is a bit more useful, as is "This one's nowhere near as good as my old one". And then there are the reviews where it's clear that someone's got hold of completely the wrong end of the stick but has nonetheless decided to air their indignation anyway - which leads to reviews like "My flip-top bin didn't come with a mains lead" or "This light fitting takes GU10 bulbs and I only have E27s".
Ultimately I always end up having to weigh up the plusses and minuses before deciding whether or not to press the 'Buy It Now' button. And am I the only one who feels a little uneasy when the one/two star reviews hit the 5%+ mark?

When it comes to more complex stuff you start to need more qualified opinions. I'm currently in the throes of redecorating the house. It's an old building that someone once decided would look pretty snazzy if they put woodchip wallpaper on all the walls. So it's a complicated job and it needs some care when it comes to choosing the right tools and materials. This is where I find the 'forum' suffix useful. Typing "Best matt paint for bathrooms" into a search engine brings up a whole slew of 'Best Of' sites, but if you add the word 'forum' to the end of the search query you'll find you're able to browse though pages and pages of comments about how such-and-such a product performed over a wide variety of circumstances. Some of these comments will be made by or'nery folks, some by professionals. Again, some filtering is required. When you see numerous recommendations for a particular pot of paint from professional decorators coupled with quite a few negative reports from DIYers then you have to wonder where the disparity comes from - and more often than not it seems it's all down to poor preparation. I'm sure many a pro reads such tales of woe and shakes their head in frustration - as do I. Case in point; a DIYer recently posted a query about a tricky soldering job on one of the sax forums. I chipped in with some pertinent advice about the type of solder to use and the need for proper preparation/practice. My advice was subsequently ignored - and a little while later another post appeared showing just how badly the job had gone wrong. Quelle surprise.

But as you start paying more for your items it becomes even more essential that you find opinions that you can trust, and that the reasons for those opinions are clearly explained - and hopefully backed up with some evidence. And yeah, for me the gold standard is finding someone like me who works in the field of the thing I want to buy. Someone who takes, say, power tools apart and points out what's good and bad, and says/shows why something's skukum or otherwise (and yeah, I watch that guy's reviews too). Aren't many of us about.

When it comes to horn reviews I'm acutely aware of the fact that there are just a handful of us out there who're both prepared and qualified to assess the worth of a product in engineering terms, and I'm also acutely aware that we have a certain duty to be as accurate and as fair as we possibly can. There are lots of horns that I've had good things to say about - but that doesn't mean I'd buy one, because no matter how well they stack up in terms of how they're built they simply don't 'do it for me' with regard to how they play. I can't allow that personal preference to cloud my judgement unless there's some issue that I feel may affect the playability for everyone (a stuffy blow or a tuning problem for instance, or maybe even an unusual tonal approach).
And there's a difference between what I say in the reviews and what I say to clients who chat to me about a particular horn. I know I often have a bit of a rant about some of the shoddy build quality I see (it really does get my goat) but it might surprise you to know that when it comes to the more hard-hitting reviews I always allow myself some time to step back from what I've written and come back to it at a later date with a fresh pair of eyes.
Sure, I could just say "Have you ever seen anything like this?? It's SHIT!!" - but there are better ways to say such things. Kinder ways, perhaps - or more considered. Have I taken the time to explain why something's 'bad'? Have I drawn up any comparisons? Have I left some room for you to make up your own mind? Am I being reasonable? Have I earned your trust?
That probably means that if you read a review that seems quite harsh, you can pretty much bet that the draft was rather more...shall we say...earthy.

In the last few years I've seen a hell of a lot of boutique horns - and in recent years a good few 'Boutweaqued' ones...which are essentially the same thing but with some post-production tweaks added - and, sad to say, often quite a lot of dubious claims made about 'resonance' and all that sort of marketing malarkey.
And it seems to me that folks are expecting me to assess these horns to a set of standards. That's a very reasonable expectation, of course, but it's a huge responsibility.
I do have some help though, in the form of comparisons based on price. If you make a horn that costs a certain price then it's a done deal that it's going to be compared to other horns that cost much the same.
Sure, I get the argument that a portion of the cost of a horn must come down to how that horn sounds - but the counter to that is always going to be "Fair enough; but how long is it gonna be able to make that sound?"
If it starts to break down after a year it's a pretty poor deal, right?
So there's a need for balance - or better still, a set of acknowledged benchmarks.

Such things are pretty common in industry. If, say, you needed to order a few thousand bolts for a production run you'd specify (among other things) the diameter, pitch and class of the thread, the length and style of it, what its made from and its tensile strength. In this way you can be assured that when the bolts arrive they're all going to fit and be suitable for your application. Such standards also allow you to make decisions based on your application; there's no point in buying thousands of bolts that were designed for high stress applications when all you're making are garden ornaments. You're going to want bolts that won't handle huge amounts of stress but which, perhaps, are rustproof. And cheap.
There are all sorts of standards around the world, but a common one is the ISO system. You match your application to the relevant standard, order the parts from someone who adheres to those standards and everyone's happy. There are no arguments and disagreements because everyone agrees that 'XYZ' means 'XYZ' and not 'XYB'. Similarly if someone asks you to play a straight G major scale you know that are going to be certain notes you won't want to play.

Now then, there's absolutely no way in hell that anyone will ever be able to agree on an international standard of tone for a horn. Can you imagine the debate that would ensue if someone actually proposed such a thing?
I mean, be honest, one player's 'Warm' is another player's 'Muddy' - it would take decades to come to some sort of agreement...and even then only half of all the players would sign up for it. The rest would spend the next fifty years dissing it on SaxOnTheWeb.
No, if you're gonna have standards they have to be things that can be measured. You can't argue with a micrometer, right? Unless, of course, you've shelled out big bucks for a horn that I've berated for its build quality - in which case standards very definitely don't matter. It's all about the tone, man...the tone. Until the horn craps out on you.
But then it occurred to me that I'm already using some definitive standards. In fact that's exactly what they're called - my flat standards that I use for checking the flatness of toneholes. And boy, are these things flat! Triple lapped, no less. If you drop one of these things on an equally flat surface they 'wring' together. This means you can't just give them a tug to pull them apart; you have to slide them off.
Not so long ago I dropped one of them on the floor. That's a bit of disaster in terms of accuracy as it is - but I was in the middle of carrying out an on-the-spot repair for a client, who very 'helpfully' picked the standard up from the floor...but in so doing dragged it across the floor. Put a deep scratch in it.
There has to a be a word for those times when someone does something in all innocence which results in your having to spend a couple of hours putting it right. And I think that words is "Arsebiscuits'.

Anyway, it's widely acknowledged in the trade that a leak is present whenever you can slip a cigarette paper between a tonehole and a pad and feel no resistance. At the minimum that's a thou in old money - or 0.0254mm if you no longer watch a black and white telly, and as such it's a standard. Similarly I sometimes resort to using feeler gauges to show how much axial play there is in an action. So the tools are already there; what's not there is a set of numbers that defines a standard for a particular price-point.

At this point I'm guessing that some, even many, of you are coming to the conclusion that I've already reached. Measure the damned things. Take, say, a Yamaha 82Z and measure the tolerances. Compare it with other examples and come up with a range of tolerances. This sets the standard for that particular price bracket. Repeat ad nauseam for every price bracket until you have a broad set of standards that are demonstrably achievable.
This is, essentially, what I already do - minus the spreadsheet of facts and figures. I know what I'm going to find on a Yanagisawa WO2 or a Yamaha 82Z , and it's usually pretty damn good - so they become my benchmark for that price point. It's elegant in its simplicity. If someone can build a horn to a certain price with a certain degree of accuracy then why the hell can't everyone else?
But then what do you measure and what do you not? And how do you come up with a set standards for something like the end of key barrel? It ought to be flat and perpendicular to the length of the barrel. Now, if it's flat but not perpendicular then it's a doddle to say "The end of this barrel is flat but canted at 30 degrees and thus fails the test" - but that's a failure I rarely see. It's much more likely that the end of the barrel is slightly rounded, or there's a dip it in. Both would count as a fail - but by how much? I guess some standards would be binary; something is either 'true' or it's not.
But then there's the issue of when things are sort of OK but a bit naff. In a recent review I had a moan about the rollers on a horn's low C and Eb keys not properly filling up the gap cut into the touchpieces for them. You could certainly make the point that the rollers will still do the job they're designed for - but you can also make the point that they won't do it quite so well as rollers that are a better fit in the gap. Is it worth my while measuring these gaps? Do I make a different allowance for rollers that are cylindrical versus those that are barrel-shaped? Isn't it just simpler to point to another horn of around the same price and say "Look how nicely these rollers fit!"?
I guess I would say that a particular manufacturer will have produced a horn to their in-house standards - which means that someone will have sat down and decided what those standards are. So they clearly exist. We may not be privvy to the numbers but we can certainly see the results. And yeah, measure them in some cases when necessary. And, most importantly, we can compare those results with the output from other companies.

As I write this I'm becoming ever more aware that I've managed (with some skill) to talk myself out of measuring every horn that comes in with a micrometer simply on the basis that I've seen so many horns in their 'naked' state I can almost smell when someone's cut a good few corners.
But still, it's always nice to have the numbers - because what can be measured is no longer 'just an opinion'...it's right there, in the numbers.

But I dunno. It's been a good long while since I bashed out a Notes article, and maybe I'm just "Shootin' the breeze"' (man). What do you reckon?
Answers on a postcard - but only ones measuring 105 x 148 mm (+/- 0.5mm), OK?