Conn New Wonder II Tenor Original Satin Gold Plate Overhauled Now 216737

This gorgeous Conn New Wonder II tenor came in with a coat of protective lacquer over most of the original gold plate. We stripped the lacquer and gave this a gentle hand polish, and the gold looks nearly new! It’s one of the nicest gold plate Conns that I have seen. There are a few resolders around the side C area. I don’t see any evidence of dents there, so I guess maybe they popped off and got stuck back on at some point. That’s not that unusual in a nearly century-old saxophone. It doesn’t show its age in any other way. The keywork is nice and tight, and the action is dry and snappy under the fingers. This horn just got a complete overhaul with all new everything, and it’s back to better than new pad condition. It has the best pads in the world – Pisoni Italian leather, with my favorite resonators: slightly domed reusable made in USA brass screw in ones. When you swap out pads down the road, you can put the old (matching) resonator on the new pad, which is actually really nice. The tone is big, warm, medium dark, and spread. Nothing fills a room or carries over a section quite like a Conn New Wonder II. My previous assistant at GetASax plays one just like this that he picked as his favorite out of all the horns that came through the shop over the years. You won’t go wrong with it if what you want is a tone that people want to listen to. The combination of warmth, complexity, sweetness and residual power is what makes people who don’t even know much about saxophone perk up when a Conn is played in public. It is totally worth the vintage keywork if what you really want is a great tone. If you’re fussy about ergonomics, or if you really want to play burning bebop licks, then you may not like the left hand pinky keys. If you still want a Conn tone, look for a 10M with a nice overhaul in that case, or look at a modern Keilwerth if you need Selmer-style pinky keys. But for the rest of us, this is the horn! It’s fantastic. There’s only one available! Not sure when I’ll get a nicer one in. The overhaul is a big chunk of the cost here. I spent about $2k on it including stripping lacquer, hand polish, nice pads and resos, and the time-consuming full overhaul and thorough setup post overhaul. Comes in a nice ProTec case as well.