A Conn saxophone in that serial range should have it marked along with  the serial number.

L means low and A=440

H means High and A=456 or somewhere in there.

If it is a High Pitch, it will always sound out of tune.

If it is an L, a horn of that vintage will have its quirks, but in general will be in tune.

The new invention horns are quite rare. They were just made for a couple years.

Good Luck

Hello everyone,,,

I'm thinking of buying a curved soprano from a bandmate. It's a Conn 32XXX serial number, "New Invention" model, which dates it to roughly 1914/15-ish. Beautiful condition, plays great, and a really cool piece of saxophone history.

Since A-440 wasn't standard for instruments during that time I'm worried that it was pitched differently, making it a neat antique but ultimately useless for playing with ensembles. It plays middle A-440 with the mouthpiece all the way pushed in and upper A-880 with the predictable amount of lipping up/down you'd expect from a soprano. Is this enough to insure that the instrument is pitched correctly or is there some other easy way to find out?

Thank you my issue has been solved,...