Mendini by Cecilio Eb Alto Saxophone – Case, Tuner, Mouthpiece

I ordered this saxophone for my 5th grade daughter to use in her school band class. I’m not expert enough to speak to other situations, but if you’re considering purchasing this saxophone for a young, beginning player, I highly recommend it. Two reasons:

#1 I’m familiar with other instruments but know/knew next to nothing about the sax, so I asked my daughter to have her teacher give me an honest opinion. The music teacher said that for a beginning musician, this sax is more than adequate; he felt that it was probably good enough to last a musician into high school band. Again, while a serious, experienced saxophonist would probably want a better horn, the “Mendini by Cicilio” is fine for a beginner.

#2. The cost as compared to renting from my local music store. Obviously this will vary from place to place but I live in Utah, where things tend to be comparatively inexpensive. That said, to rent my daughter a sax would have been $55 a month. We could return it any time, or after paying $1100 we would have owned it. But at a minimum we would have needed the rental for nine months–one school year–for a total cost of $495. That’s about $300 more than it cost to purchase a sax outright. Yes, the rental was a better quality Yamaha, but see “reason #1” above for why that doesn’t matter. The only benefit to renting was free repairs, but unless someone is seriously careless with the instrument that’s not going to cost anywhere near $300. In other words, as counter-intuitive as it seems, it was much cheaper to buy this saxophone than it would have been to rent one for a single scholastic year. This doesn’t even consider the 10 free reeds (they run about $2.50 each, retail), or the tuner/metronome (like the sax–not top quality but certainly good enough to get you started; probably a $15-20 value). The only hardware I’d suggest upgrading immediately is the neck strap: the one included is uncomfortable and has actually come unhooked a couple times just by the weight of the instrument.

To sum up: this is a very decent saxophone for a very low price, much lower than anything else I could find. I am extremely satisfied with this purchase, as is my daughter, the nascent saxophonist. It still sounds like an angry goose when she plays, but her teacher assures me she’s doing fine, and that she has a good instrument to learn on.

Shipment of the product met and exceeded my expectations. I was truly elated when the instrument showed up at my door step approximately a week or so before the scheduled shipment date. My appreciation goes out to the shipper!

Until I bought this saxophone, I was playing a piece of junk that I had to share with someone in jazz band. I bought this saxophone and it was such an improvement. The mouthpiece came ready to play with the reed already attached. The tuner/metronome was a nice touch too. I ended up just giving away the white gloves because they just made it harder to play. The case seems really well made too, and it has a zipper compartment for music, which is extremely useful. It even comes with two extra straps that you can hook onto the case, so you can use it as a backpack if you want. The saxophone itself is very easy to play and has great tone quality throughout the whole range. I am able to hit the low notes much better than I was on my last saxophone.

There are a few reasons I am giving it four stars instead of five. First, the mouthpiece is a piece of junk. Luckily I already had a higher quality mouthpiece. The neck strap was also very mediocre, but I had my own neck strap too so this was really no problem. As far as the saxophone itself, there isn’t much bad I can say about it. The two straps that hook onto the case are really low quality too, and one of mine already broke. But unless you actually use those it shouldn’t really be a problem. The only problems I have been having is that a. it goes sharp really easily, but that is just because I have a small mouthpiece, and b. the g-sharp pad and low c-sharp pad have been sticky.

Overall, I think it is a great instrument for students/beginners. At $200 it is very reasonably priced. Just make sure you either own your own mouthpiece or get a better mouthpiece if you are buying this.

Fue un regalo que hice y él esta FELIZ!!!, todo en tiempo y recomiendo ampliamente al vendedor porque cuando quería apoyo de rastreo siempre estaba al pendiente!!, gracias!!! (: