Allow me to introduce myself: I’m Josh Creekmore, a woodwind repair technician employed by Saxquest in St. Louis, Missouri. In my first year at Saxquest, I witnessed a now former technician, Chris Watrous, perform some incredibly detailed and high-quality restorations of vintage and experimental saxes for the museum. Since then, it has been a personal and a career goal of mine to get to that same place: restoring and preserving saxophones of historic interest for current and future generations to enjoy. I’m thrilled and privileged to be involved in some capacity in the work that the National Saxophone Museum is doing to preserve and bring to light unusual, rare, historic, and experimental saxophones.
The first experimental horn that I ever saw in person was a Conn 10M prototype restored by Mr. Watrous that can be viewed in the National Saxophone Museum galleries. That sax is one of three known in that particular configuration. A weird and wonderful instrument. NSM now has in its collection several other Conn prototype saxophones from their development laboratory. The topical instrument of this article is the first of many from a recent major acquisition that will be restored and preserved in the coming years.
Before we progress, I’d like to take a moment to clarify nomenclature. The “10M” was Conn’s model number for their low-pitched tenor saxes dating back to at least the first “New Wonder” series of instruments. In the 21st century, the common nomenclature for Conn’s tenor saxes is “NW1/NWI” for the first series of New Wonder horns, “NW2/NWII” or “Chu” for the second series, and “10M” for the Artist series horns made from the mid-1930s until the 1970s. Effectively, “10M” was a model number used for over six decades. For the purposes of this article, I will refer to the topical saxophone as a 10M because it is correct in more ways than one. This instrument is a 10M by model number, but it is also a “10M” in that it represents an experimental departure from the standard-production New Wonder 2 from which it was derived.
Differences Between the Loomis 10M and Contemporary Conn Production Saxophones
