About

We help people buy a used band instrument without getting burned. Name the model you’re after, like a Yamaha YAS-280 alto sax, a Bach TR300 trumpet, a Buffet R13 clarinet or a Gemeinhardt flute, and there’s a page for it. Each one tells you the model’s story, who it suits, how to date it, the versions you’ll see listed and what to check before you buy.

A lot of our readers are parents buying a first instrument for a child starting school band, and the rest are players stepping up. What repair techs and band directors know about these instruments is scattered across maker sites, service notes and years of experience, and a raw eBay search gives you none of it. So we keep 35 model pages in one place, write down the tells that matter (leaky pads, red rot, stuck slides, dents in the wrong place, missing mouthpieces and necks) and pick the listings we’d buy.

We don’t sell instruments. No affiliate links. We earn nothing. We run no analytics or tracking cookies, and we’re not affiliated with any instrument maker or music store. See how we work for how the pages are researched and our disclosure for how links, picks and photos work.

Valve & Pad is part of allbutnew, a set of shops for secondhand gear. Got an instrument to sell? The “Get an offer” link on every model page sends it to our band instrument expert, who replies by email.