I have the bass and tenor sax stands, and they are perfect for travelinh

I play low woodwinds so I’m always conscious of the amount of weight I have to carry at any given time. When I found out about the instrument stands being built at WoodWindDesign I immediately sought them out. I have not been disappointed with a single item I have purchased from them. The innovative design allows the stands to be carried with and inside the instrument so I don’t have any extra bags. The carbon fiber construciton means the stands are long-lasting (I’ve owned some for over 10 years now) and exceptionally light so I haven’t had to worry about any additional strain on my body when carrying my instruments. These stands have been life and music savers!

I’ve received prompt and helpful replies anytime I’ve written with questions and concerns so I have complete trust in Gijs anytime I order a new product from him. He is a rare and special individual in the world of music-making!

I’ve been enjoying the cornet stand I bought back in 2021 quite a lot. For some time, I have been working on assembling a compact but usable collection of equipment that all fits inside my gigbag. I was never too fond of the kinds of instrument stands that sit in the bell of the instrument in the bag. I want to be able to take out and put away the instrument without obstruction, regardless of whether I plan to use an instrument stand or not. So the instrument stand needed to fit inside one of the side pockets. This one from Woodwinddesign was the one thing that finally made that possible and I have been using it ever since.

However, I once or twice have had one of the legs come loose causing the whole thing to topple over (one time was especially disheartening because I did not manage to catch my cornet in time; it seemed to have survived without any obvious damage, luckily). I am unsure whether this was due to user error (maybe I didn’t insert the leg all the way?) or something else (if the magnet isn’t entirely flush with the end of the leg or bottom of the hole, the way it’s rotated might affect things?). My cornet is a Conn 80A (i.e. an American-style long cornet) and a quite hefty one at that, so maybe the center of mass is different than expected. Perhaps it would be better suited with the flugel stand instead?

I do think that some improvements could be made regarding this, if nothing else to ease the player’s mind a bit. Maybe by rotating the legs a quarter turn to engage some retaining feature, or a few screw threads? Or some simply notches along the legs, where one could attach some rubber bands to pull the legs toward the center of the instrument stand.

I do understand that it’s not primarily the magnets in the legs that provide structural stability (instead it’s the fairly long bores where the legs sit, coupled with the weight of the instrument pushing down on it), but I can’t help wondering if increasing the diameter of the legs to incorporate some bigger magnets would help as well. Of course, that would require increasing the diameter of the center tube as well.

Or, alternatively, maybe just increasing the length of the legs would help prevent the legs working themselves out of the holes over time during a rehearsal or performance. Perhaps you could have legs of different lengths for sale, all interchangeable with the main tube. I could see this being beneficial for woodwind stands as well, where the player might want to make legs spread out a bit wider to protect against people bumping into the instrument.

All this said, I would still highly recommend this instrument stand for someone like myself (a hobbyist musician). For professional players with extremely expensive instruments, I would instead recommend first contacting Woodwinddesign to see if you can customize the instrument stand to accommodate your particular instrument and account for its center of gravity.

My second suggestion for an improvement is a lot more benign. This was not entirely obvious to me for the first few weeks after I started using it, but since the stand is designed to be tilted away from the center of mass of the instrument, the holes for the legs are not all bored at the same angle. Two of the legs have rubber tubes on them that serve to protect the bell. You want to make sure that these legs end up on the correct side with regards to the tilt, but it’s not obvious at a glance which holes they should go into to achieve this. Some markings on the instrument stand to differentiate the holes would help massively. I added my own markings, just a crude dot with a white-out pen above the holes where the legs with rubber should go.

I purchased a couple months ago the alto sax stand and the soprano stand that is also used for clarinet. I wanted to use them a few months before providing my experience.

First I love how small and light they are! I can easily snug them in my gig bag without adding weight , something I was looking for. Big yeah

The alto sax very sturdy easy to assemble and disassemble, just don’t know why the two smallest legs are not inserted in the main « tube » , adding more sturdiness ? But really so far so good, I love my stand . Big yeah again.

I must admit that the soprano stand , I have some reservation. I love it for its incredible minimal size and weightlessnesses! But twice my clarinet fell…. Someone bumping into it. What I am a bit concern is that the legs are so small that the magnets at the end are also small, and even though I snap them in ok, it seems that they can more easily detach and therefore destabilize the stand and the clarinet. So I might be the one at fault, or just that the stand would benefit of been a bit bigger, leg wise to allow bigger magnets so it is more sturdy. So time will tell. Overall, happy customer.

I have been using the saxophone stands for my bari saxes (both low a and low b) for some months. It is easy to assemble and disassemble and can be transported in the bell of the instrument. Placing the instrument on the stand requires some care, but generally, the setup is very stable. Overall, a great user experience!