First Decade: Living with Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS)

Photographed at a private event in October 2025, one of my first few gigs playing this Selmer SBA

One of the first things I did once I started getting a regular paycheck in August 2016 was to buy a saxophone, then another one, and another one, and then another; same with mouthpieces. At the very bottom of my complete gig archive, I also keep track of what equipment I've been using. I started keeping track in November 2017, about a year after I began switching equipment fairly regularly in search of my own sound and means of expression. 

I had played the same 69xxx Selmer Mark VI since about 2008 through finishing my M.M. at NEC in 2015. When I went to Beijing in September 2015 before moving to NYC, I brought along my student Jupiter 700-series tenor, which I hadn't played since middle school. I had a sacrilegious but undeniable feeling at the time, which was: this horn seems to be more powerful than the VI. Sure, the sound was boxier and maybe less refined, but for playing live gigs unamplified with bass and drums, it really did the job and felt good. As I wrote about a bit in June 2016, I bought a Geo M. Bundy Conn stencil in January 2016 and loved the lightness of the horn, the presence of the sound, and just the way it responded to my air; whereas the Selmer felt resistant and heavy, the student model horn seemed to project my sound all around me and let me hear myself way better.

In the course of hounding eBay for the next few years, I got to know Bill Singer pretty well through my various visits to him in midtown (his shop, which used to be shared with D'Addario on 37th Street before the pandemic, was just a 15 minute walk from my office). I brought Bill a lot of pretty beaten up horns over those years, but he managed to rescue or make playable just about all of them except a disastrous Selmer SBA from Saxquest, which was essentially unrepairable given the advanced state of rust and disrepair (that was when I knew I had hit my limit). 

Over the course of spring 2016 while TA'ing for Vijay Iyer at Harvard, I saved up to buy a 50xxx (ca. 1919) satin gold plated Conn New Wonder I from eBay. Dan Pencer did a beautiful overhaul (including fixing cracks in the metal in the bow), and the horn has been "living" at my aunt's apartment in Beijing since about 2018 or so when I started the Blue Note China Jazz Orchestra gig. From 2016 until 2019, I kept playing NWIs, but never owned a New Wonder II (aka "Chu Berry") for whatever reason, even though Lester Young's horn is technically a New Wonder II (144xxx serial). 

In 2019, I splurged and finally bought a horn I'd dreamt about for a while: a custom gold-plated Conn 30M "Connqueror," which had been owned by Al Epstein, who had his name engraved in huge block letters on the bell (effectively effacing and replacing the original engraving). As far as I can tell, Epstein was mainly a section player on the New York scene and not a well-known soloist, but his name has occasionally popped up in my various listenings (most recently on George Russell's New York, N.Y., where he's credited on percussion. '59 Coltrane is featured on one of the tracks, where his tone is noticeably different given the way they recorded the large ensemble, but it's distinctly his sheets of sound-era language). 

I joined the waitlist to get the horn overhauled by Carlo Cennamo in Seattle after getting the horn, and partway during the lockdown (roughly a year and a half after joining the waitlist), it was my turn. He did a magnificent job of restoring and essentially rebuilding a horn that had been well-loved and played to the point of coming apart, and I continued playing this horn through October 2022 (the 30M is featured on The Fate of the Tenor), when I took a chance on a well-priced relacquered 1950 King Super 20 with full pearls.

It was probably just a matter of time; Bird played on a series 1 Super 20 with full pearls and a silver bell (a special model made for him and endorsed artists, I believe). I later realized mine is a series 2 with a different mechanism for the bell keys and a different keyguard, but the sound of the horn is powerfully bright and vibrant with a very modern-feeling mechanism (much "faster" than the 30M despite that horn being adjusted to its optimum mechanical design). Mario Scaramuzza in Brooklyn overhauled the horn in December 2022, and the horn held up amazingly well over the next few years, with barely any additional work needed aside from light touchups (most of which I was able to do on my own with a modest amount of instrument repair experience gleaned from my pre-pandemic visits to Bill).

The three-year itch settled in again in 2025, when I began playing regularly with Ben Solomon, one of the most powerful saxophonists I've ever played with or heard live. Ben was playing a Mark VI for years and then switched to a Balanced Action earlier this year, and I was intrigued; I felt that despite the raw edge and volume of the King, it just didn't seem to be as centered or powerful in projection compared to some Selmers. The effect is more from the player perspective: it felt like American horns like Kings and Conns gave me more of my sound back as I played (maybe by dispersing the sound to the sides due to the size and placement of tone holes), whereas the older Selmers gave me less sound as a player but clearly directed the sound more forward toward the audience. 

Earlier this year, I started to search in earnest for a Selmer that might fit the bill for what I was looking for. I began by trying a few Cigar Cutter (pre-Balanced Action horns from the early '30s), but the left-hand pinky table was a clear step down from the King and the sound just didn't seem to justify the ergonomics. I then tried some Balanced Actions, but with the advice of Ben and Mario, the horns I was trying didn't seemed to justify their cost. Finally, after buying and returning multiple promising Super Balanced Actions, I ended up going with a 40xxx (Coltrane-era) relacquered horn by Kim Bock, whose sterling reputation among NYC saxophone repair techs and international reputation for necks helped me commit to investing in a horn whose price tag was basically triple what I'd paid for the Super 20. I've been playing it since October 15, 2025 and been loving it, but knowing myself, this might not be the end of the road. Hopefully it will, but that remains to be seen.

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Don't get me started on mouthpieces!