King Conn

So much stuff, this may ramble a bit.  Reading up on the Conn Instruments company.  Based in Elkhart, IN, the company was founded by Charles Gerard Conn, a cornet player, in 1850.  In 1888, the Conn factory started making its first saxophones.  The success of the Conn saxophones led to a subsequent deluge of saxes from other makers, including Martin, King, and Beuscher (and eventually Selmer).  The growth of the school band movement at the turn of the century can in many ways be attributed to the resourceful and fiery Conn.  The initial method was a sort of Harold Hill way of conducting business: swing into a small town, pluck a kid out of the gathered crowd, teach her to play a song or two within minutes (usually on a saxophone), then sell horns (or rent them cheaply) to the amazed parents, then blow out of town again.

The Conn Company began as a bakery and grocery business, but after Conn met Frenchman Eugene Dupont in 1876, the two went into the instrument building business.  Dupont was an instrument maker, Conn had originally set out to make some improvements to brass mouthpieces.  The resulting saxophones (it is unclear to me, as of yet, as to why he went from cornet to sax building.  It is perhaps due to the rise in the saxophone's popularity-that you will recall was beginning to explode about this time).  Of course, Conn made other brass horns too, but his early M series saxes were particularly popular, and are collectible today. 

[Personal aside:  I've never felt the need to own or play a vintage horn.  The way I see it, technology and design has improved the saxophone to much greater degrees of precision and sound.  It is akin to a clarinetist who will only play clarinets built at, or shortly after, the time of the clarinet's inception and development (about 350 years ago).  Intonation would be disastrous, some keys may be absent, and the ergonomics may just not be comfortable.  For these reasons, I will always try to find and play on modern instruments.  But, as with many things, to each his own.]

Part of the M series was the famous "Naked Lady" saxophones.  Engravings are etched into the finished instrument by real, live engravers (still done this way now).  The engravings were all done freehand, and often at whatever whim the engraver chose.  This resulted in a variety of engraved images, including a half-naked woman.  Because the images were done at the engravers' caprice, none of them were identical.

In 2000, the Conn company merged with Selmer, creating Conn-Selmer (the Leblanc company is buried in there, too), a subsidiary of Steinway Musical Instruments.  Everyone owns everyone.