We have so many times now had the pleasure of witnessing the “light bulb” moment in our shop, when a player for the first time is trying a different saxophone neck on his or her horn – “Wow! I never knew it makes such a difference!”… is a common outburst 10 seconds into playing a different sax neck.
The saxophone neck has a big impact on both how the saxophone sounds and on how it feels to produce this sound. In addition, the neck also affects the intonation of the instrument – how well the octaves line up and determines if the lower range is in tune with the upper range.
You could say the sound is generated at the tip of the mouthpiece and the setup here (mouthpiece and reed) has a large influence on the sound. However, the saxophone neck, being the first part of the horn that the air and the sound wave enters, then both shapes the sound and also delivers feedback to the player in the form of how much back pressure there is and how free blowing it feels.
The inner volume and exact dimension of the saxophone neck also affect intonation – it is always nice when players with intonation problems (typically a high range running sharp) realize that their saxophone are perfectly fine and a different saxophone neck can fix the intonation issues.
Most players are so used to seeking changes they are looking for by switching mouthpieces, reeds, ligatures, etc. And when still not happy with the outcome, then they start looking at changing saxophones. The large effect the saxophone neck has on sound, response, intonation and projection has for the longest time been somewhat under-appreciated.
So to summarize – the neck does indeed affect all of the following areas of saxophone sound:
1: Sound color (bright/dark)
2: Tonal feel (wide/slender)
3: Intonation
4: Dynamic range
5: Response (quick/sluggish)
6: Projection
Using these areas as our basis, we have created 7 parameters for comparing saxophone necks. If interested, you can read more about these comparisons.
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