r/saxophone • u/Trick-Carrot-1942 • 2d ago
Question Can anyone please tell me what I’ve got here?!
Obviously, it’s a Selmer Soloist D tenor mouthpiece. It came with a bunch of other stuff in a box from an estate auction. I have no idea what this metal addition is on the top! Maybe an experimental resonator or something? Anyone know? Does it still have any value? Thanks in advance!
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u/asdfmatt Alto | Tenor 2d ago
It's a piezo pickup. Back in the 60s (late 60s) as bands were getting more electrified there was a system called Varitone that used a pickup to amplify the saxophone, feed it through synthesizer effects and to avoid feedback from loud microphones.
Around that time, microphone technology got better (the SM58 was released in 1966) and PA systems were pretty new back then (most bands just brought loud ass amps and cranked it to fill an auditorium or whatever) and they became obsolete when PA systems got to be ubiquitous (see: Grateful Dead "Wall of Sound").
They're kind of coming into use again with experimental saxophonists to drive effects systems and other "prepared instrument" types of performance/avant garde music.
You can see there is a threaded part on the inside of that rim where the connector and electronics of the pickup would go in there. For a brief moment Selmer offered Mark VI with the Varitone integrated into the instrument, and they would install the pickup in the neck and run a cord down the horn inside of a tube. Look inside of your box of trinkets for a disk that says "Varitone" that goes with this. Maybe attached to a cord, IDK exactly what they look like and there was a lot of different experimentation with them as they struggled to really 'catch on' with the saxophone-playing world.
These are usually removed and patched up with a small piece of metal. I think some people installed them on mouthpieces as to not affect the originality/have to modify the saxophone itself. Some mouthpieces are floating around that have been patched as well.
Unfortunately as I mentioned it seems like this is missing the rest of the pickup and the value of the mouthpiece is going to take a hit (since it's modified). A long shank soloist like you have is worth maybe $150-200 without a pickup. Patched/with pickups are significantly less (as they are modified) and I don't think the pickup are worth that much. But they might be getting kind of rare, there's not a lot of info on them available in terms of sales and pricing (and as I mentioned a lot of the factory Selmers that had them were removed in the past 30-40 years).
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u/Trick-Carrot-1942 2d ago
Thank you for this information! It sounds like I may be better off removing the pick up and plugging the hole with two-part epoxy or something similar.. then just using the mouthpiece as it is!
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u/asdfmatt Alto | Tenor 2d ago
Hmmm. maybe. Might not be worth the expense but it's worth experimenting I guess. There is a similar one listed on Reverb for like $100 USD. This piece looks like the tip rail is chipped and if it's an original facing they weren't great. It will cost about $150-200 to get it refaced and patched professionally. Plugging it yourself with epoxy will probably irreversibly damage the mouthpiece and mouthpieces are incredibly sensitive to internal changes of their geometry (if your plug isn't perfectly flush). A refacer would do the same thing but they'd have the right tools to smooth it out and make it almost invisible.
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u/DeliciousIsopod909 1d ago
Originally there would have been a metal cap with a rubber gasket to seal the hole when you weren't using the pickup. I used to use a pickup on my necks with an octave doubler. You could play 3 or 4 octaves at once.
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u/joe-knows-nothing 2d ago
It's a pickup. Plug it into a Boss HM2 and a fender amp and have fun.