The Modell Peter Ponzol
s/n 90,500 to 100,000; ca. 1986 to 1993

An E-Mail Interview with Peter Ponzol

In 2003, after I posted my first version of my Keilwerth pages, I was contacted by Peter Ponzol. He said he wanted to “clear up” a few things about the Modell Peter Ponzol and his tenure at Keilwerth.

Below, I’ve consolidated my questions into two parts:

* Questions about Peter Ponzol himself, his involvement with Keilwerth and the development of the Modell Peter Ponzol saxophone.
* Questions about the Peter Ponzol sax necks.

This makes things a little easier to read – after all, these were three separate e-mails. 

As always, my additions are in brackets ([ ]).

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PH: How did you get involved with Keilwerth?  What was your position and "mission" there?

PP: I will try and answer your questions without going into my life story. A lot of this information is in a Saxophone Journal interview from late 1992 or 1993.

I was a consultant for the Lyricon in the late 70's, while living as a jazz and studio player in NYC. I believe that it was 1980 that I demonstrated the Lyricon at the Frankfurt Music Fair. There I met the people from Buffet (which had just been purchased by Boosey & Hawkes). They invited me to come to the factory after the show and try some of their saxophones which I did. 

After returning to NYC, I became involved with the US part of the company in an effort to make a Buffet for the jazz market. During an extended 1981 stay in Europe, on a grant from the German government, I began to work on prototypes at the factory in Mantes. There was a problem in that B&H wanted a saxophone for the jazz market and Buffet saw the saxophone world as classical. My prototypes were never realized and B&H sent me to Keilwerth, which was in the same German village as B&H Germany, to see what I thought of the Keilwerth horns. I saw a lot of potential in these horns and B&H had Keilwerth make 100 horns with the Buffet logo and engraving. After realizing that Buffet was never going to change and being frustrated that my ideas were not being utilized, I left in 1985.

I then approached Keilwerth, which was still a small family company to see if they would be interested in my ideas. We redesigned the saxophone they had been making for Conn [the “DJH Modified” horns]/Armstrong [the H-Couf models] by moving tone holes and designing a new neck. The saxophones they had been making were all flat in the palm keys so I suggested making the tone holes larger to raise the pitch. 1986 saw the introduction of the Modell Peter Ponzol for the European market and the making of saxophones with only the Keilwerth name. (By the way, I moved to Germany in 1981 and was very busy as a jazz player playing all over Europe and with the Jazz Ensemble on the Frankfurt Radio Station HR.) We built an excellent European market for Keilwerth and in 1989, Boosey & Hawkes took over Keilwerth. I worked closely with Gerhard Keilwerth who is an excellent technician. I would give Gerhard an idea and on my next visit to the factory he would have some possibilities for me to try. My position was that of consultant and tester: I would go in the factory once a week to test my models and in general check on the production. We also did many workshops throughout Europe.

I began making mouthpieces in 1985 and we tied both products into our workshops. My model came with a Ponzol mouthpiece, a different neck which was personally chosen by me for each instrument and I did all the final testing on all Ponzol saxophones and the guarantee card bore my signature. As I mentioned, the G# mechanism, adjustable palm keys and F arm with adjusting screw were all developed on my model.

Being a jazz player, of course my goal was to make first a good saxophone and second [to make] one that was aimed at the largest market. During marketing studies we found that classical saxophone represented 3% of the world market in 1985. I was never able to get Keilwerth to change the size of the bow which I feel causes the sound to spread too much. We made a prototype with a smaller bow that I thought was fantastic, but it was never put into production.

B&H did not like using my name on the saxophone and had no desire to make further major changes to the saxophones, so I became too expensive and my involvement with the company ended in March, 1993. I then returned to the US after a wonderful 12 years in Europe. The Modell Ponzol became the SX90, but without real rolled tone holes [the SX90R “uses tonehole rings which are soldered on to the standard drawn toneholes”] and with a different neck [,however] I would not like to make a comparison between my model and the new Keilwerth saxophones.

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PH: I've heard a bit about your custom necks. How did you get started doing this? What do you think about using wood as a material for a sax, particularly for a neck?

PP: […] I learned with Keilwerth and Buffet how important the neck was and made many notes about various experiments. Remember that I had a factory at my disposal so every time I had an idea I received a prototype for testing. Seeing that the current method of making necks is good for production, but not always the best for the instrument, I decided that there was a good market for necks that would play better than the factory necks.

I am a strong believer in the neck being the same material as the body of the saxophone.

In principal, the ideal saxophone would be one piece, but it is totally impractical. I have experimented with necks of different materials and find a mismatch in the overtones.

As to wooden necks, I think that it is asking for problems. I made about 100 wooden mouthpieces and know very well the problems of wood and moisture. In theory the material should have no influence on the sound and I strongly believe that. However, different materials have different resistance and this causes you to play differently in order to compensate for more or less resistance.