Where do you fall in the saxophone repair continuum?
How much work do you personally feel comfortable doing on your saxophone? Is replacing a neck cork in your repertoire? How about changing the pads? What about replacing springs? Dent repair? Would you dare undertake an overhaul? Or are you more like me, and are you just willing to look after the everyday maintenance like cleaning, unsticking pads, keeping the finish maintained, and making minor emergency repairs as required?
A few weeks ago I got my ass toasted on a saxophone forum because of a comment I made about home saxophone repairs. I noted that the problem with home repair jobs is that they might eventually end up in the saxophone marketplace.
This is part of my actual post:
Here’s where I have a problem with home repairs: they don’t stay always “at home”. Certainly every player has the right to do whatever they want with their property. And while I might not like your poorly playing and set-up horn, if down the road you go to sell it, I don’t have to buy it. A parent buying said horn for his/her child, or an inexperienced player just starting out, might not know that there are problems with the way the horn has been set-up.
Or worse yet, I think we can all think of examples of players we have run across online, who buy beater horns, fix them up, and then advertise them for sale again as “fully overhauled”. Many times these players have 0 experience with repairs, and know virtually nothing when it comes to fixing saxophones. Any knowledge they have, they have gleaned through the Internet, and perhaps through talking with a local tech or two…
A go-to book for home saxophone repairs
Esteemed repair tech Stephen Howard, has written an excellent resource manual for saxophonists. The Haynes Saxophone Manual was published in late 2009, and is a book I recommend for all serious players because it provides some great fixes for everyday problems (like sticking keys), as well as gives great info and advice about how to look after your horn, and keep it running well between professional services.
Source: haynes.co.uk
The broad areas Stephen covers are:
- Buying a saxophone
- The saxophone in detail
- General care
- Maintenance and setting up
- Advanced maintenance
- Check and troubleshooting
- Further reading and resources
For the adventuresome types, in his Advanced Maintenance sections Stephen covers things like pad and spring replacement. But right in those chapters he writes:
The aim of this manual is to show you how to maintain and service your saxophone to keep it in good working order, but because of the intricacies and skills involved in setting pads I can’t in all honesty recommend that you attempt it. There’s a huge difference between thinking a pad is set and knowing that it is, and that difference will have a very significant effect on the performance of your instrument.
Source: Haynes Saxophone Manual by Stephen Howard, p 130
Replacing a broken needle spring isn’t a difficult job in theory, but in order to do it well and without damaging the pillar it requires a suitable tool (a pair of spring pliers). More often than not the hardest part is getting the old spring out – and this again requires specialist tools to do the job without damaging the instrument. It usually also requires a certain amount of dismantling of the keywork, or in some cases an entire key stack, and as such I would recommend leaving this kind of work to a professional.
Source: Haynes Saxophone Manual by Stephen Howard, p 140
So as you can see, Stephen points out that there times when a professional saxophone technician is the person who should be looking after the repair work on your horn. Sadly, not everyone heeds his advice when it comes to saxophone repair.
My personal experience with a home saxophone repair
In 2006, shortly after I became ill, I bought the 10M I now have from a fellow on a saxophone forum. The horn was advertised as having just had a repad, but needing a final setup. Sadly this was not the case at all: the horn was in fact a train wreck.
The horn needed a complete restoration, major amounts of dent removal, a complete set of set screws, and ideally a new neck. And the repad job? Well it turns out the pads weren’t affixed at all. They were just placed into the key cups.
The guy who sold this Conn tenor to me is a clown, 
yet to this day he enjoys a good reputation on saxophone forums. Why did I not say anything negative about him? Well because I didn’t want to cause any waves, and I was too ill to deal with the consequences of it all.
Online buyers should budget in the costs of an overhaul
With that purchase I learned a lesson first hand that I had previously repeated to others ad nauseam: When you buy a horn online, unless you are buying it from a reputable vintage saxophone dealer and you know the saxophone’s true condition, count on spending money on an overhaul. This way if the horn doesn’t need it, you’re ahead of the game.
When people sell saxophones that are poorly set-up or maintained, they might not being doing it maliciously. Sometimes they honestly don’t know that what they are selling is going to need $500+ of work. Other times… Well let’s just say people do know, and just don’t care. I’d like to think though that those people are in the minority however.
All that aside, I believe that it is certainly every person’s right to do with their saxophone what they want: change the pads; strip the lacquer; airbrush it with crazy colours; or do whatever the f 
else they want to do with their horn. When they go to sell it though, I think the horn ought to come a big disclaimer sticker on the case. A sticker that looks something like this…
In the saxophone repair shop where I work, we have a saying “We fix what you repair.”
😆 Love it! 😆
I draw the line at dent work because I lack the tools. I have done emergency dent work when it was the only option available and the instrument needed to be playable immediately, but even then I’ll stop when it’s good enough for the instrument to function properly and leave the final smoothing and such for when I can send the instrument out. Or, like my YTS-21, the final step never gets done and the dent work remains a bit on the lumpy side.
The hardest part about doing anything with springs, or in the vicinity of the springs, is not getting stabbed by them. Since the probability of getting stabbed by a spring approaches 100% the longer you tinker, it’s essential to get in the habit of freezing when you do get stuck, rather than jerking reflexively in the opposite direction (guaranteed to get you impaled twice as bad on another spring).
I can and do replace and level pads. I almost never file tone holes, unless there is a gross and obvious need to do so (which only happens on newly acquired horns, barring substantial damage). Once metal is removed, the only way it’s ever coming back is by replacing the tone hole with a soldered one.
I don’t hesitate to mess with spring tension to make the horn feel comfortable. Some vintage horns have mechanisms with springs opposing other springs opposing yet more springs — octave keys and fork-Eb keys are notorious for this. Even a modern horn has springs in opposition on the upper octave link and the articulated low C#. These can be difficult to set up to one’s liking (typically they remain too stiff for comfort) while functioning properly, which is why I always take these on FIRST. That way I don’t end up with a lightly sprung horn with one or two hard keys when I’d rather have a slightly stiffer sprung horn that’s more consistent. Practically every new horn I’ve ever seen (that wasn’t specifically set up by the vendor) has been WAY too stiff overall. In the case of some of the cheaper horns, this is no doubt to cover up some of the slop in their mechanics. Still, I could pull a new Selmer or Yamaha off the shelf and it’d be too tight for most players’ preferences.
I’ll solder dislodged posts and such myself without hesitation, unless the finish is in prime condition, and is lacquer. If it’s any sort of epoxy (like the almost-black Orpheo alto I had, which arrived with one of the bell-to-body brace points broken), it’ll survive a little heating. If it’s electroplating, there won’t be any trouble at all (unless it’s nickel, which will peel if heated TOO much). Generally the only instruments I get with pristine lacquer finishes don’t need soldering work, so it’s not much of a concern.
Though I haven’t been formally trained, I’ve been repairing both woodwind and brass instruments for almost as long as I’ve been playing them. I’ve screwed up from time to time, and no doubt will screw up again at some point in the future, and I have a bad habit of letting temporary hacks remain in place longer than originally intended. Sometimes this is because I never get what I need to fix it properly, sometimes it’s because the temporary fix works better than expected, and sometimes it’s because I just plain forget I did the fix at all. I’m particularly guilty of wrapping the neck cork in plumber’s tape when it starts to wear thin, and just applying more and more until it’s almost all tape and no cork. 😳 But that’s the sort of thing I’d clean up before selling a horn, so it’s not really an issue.
Non-permanent intonation fixes like tone hole crescents, adjusting key heights, and placing inserts into the neck to correct palm key flatness/unresponsiveness are something I do on any horn that needs them. All of these are reversible without too much trouble, which is good because they’re frequently mouthpiece-dependent. What plays in tune with one setup is not necessarily what works with another. For example the Dolnet bari has a tendency to play quite sharp at the bottom end (unless I reduce the cross-section with an insert) with any sort of large-chambered mouthpiece such as a Link STM or a Meyer or a classically-oriented “pickle barrel”. Put on something with a high baffle like my stainless Brilhart 5*, or a Berg Larsen 0 chamber, and the intonation issues at the bottom just magically vanish. Unfortunately, that also makes the horn sound like a tunable chainsaw, so that’s not a viable option for me.
There’s nothing wrong with plumber’s tape. As a matter of fact Stephen Howard writes about it in his book.
😆 😆 😆 😆
Hey, what’s wrong with a tunable chainsaw? Some would argue that my Medusa is just that—no matter what kind of mouthpiece you throw on it. :devil2:
You and I are at the very opposite ends of the DIY saxophone repairs spectrum. I suspect Mal-2, that the difference between you, and a great many other people “out there”, is that you may actually be able to pull off the stuff that you’re doing.
Since I’ve never played one of your horns, I can’t say for sure what your tech skills are like. That said, I suspect if I were to buy one of your horns (your Donet bari notwithstanding 😉 ) I wouldn’t have to budget for a $1000 overhaul. As for your bari… speaking of “hacks”… How’s the tube doing? Or have you permanently found a fix for that idiosyncrasy?
No permanent fix. Either I play a pea-shooter mouthpiece, or I stick two sprinkler pipes (corked at the ends) inside the bell. Fortunately, sprinkler pipes are cheap, lightweight, and not hard to install/remove. They also aren’t easily visible to the audience.
The last months I have neglected all saxophone sites due to a loss in my family.
But as I was raised in a both musical and technical gifted family I just have to respond to this item.
Maintenance is about knowing what you can do and what not.
As there are a lot of myths around the technical aspects of musical instruments most people can not make this difference. The Haynes manual can help, but you need a strong technical background to do something in the advanced maintenance chapter.
An important question for me, when I want to make a DIY adaptation to a musical instrument is:
Is the thing you want to change reversible?
If not I am inclined to find someone who can do it.
Sometimes a tech, sometimes a goldsmith (they are much better in soldering).
When using a tech for pads the problem arises that a lot of techs use a file for toneholes, which changes the instrument irreversible.
When a irreversible change is necessary ask for a second opinion.
So I learned to change pads myself in a reversible way (I outsourced my piccolo) and I do most of my springs.
Now back on the topic of DIY repair and selling (My saxophones are not for sale). Yes a disclaimer is sensible, the German ebay uses the category: repaired by seller, which says enough.
Hi Theo.
I’m very sorry to hear about your loss. My condolences.
I think you have a very balanced and thought-out approach to DIY work on your saxophones. I agree that the eBay category “Seller repaired” (or whatever the actual wording is), is very helpful. I only made up the fake sticker as a joke, and intended it to engage some conversation.
Interesting idea you have to take your saxophone to a goldsmith for soldering. I think there are many sax techs out there that do nasty soldering jobs, but also some techs that do great jobs. The problem is how do you know what kind of work your tech is going to do until the work (damage) has been done on your horn?
I’m very lucky with my current tech David. I’ve mentioned him before, but David is Swiss, and trained as a woodwind instrument maker in his home country of Switzerland. He can manufacture any key or other machined part necessary for a horn and attach anything so that it looks original.
When he recently restored my 2 Tonekings, the tenor needed its neck tenon expanded, which necessitated the removal of the neck fastening device. He warned me that there might be some lacquer discoloration, but in the end there was none, and the soldering job is flawless. No one could tell that that strange little nose piece had been removed and reattached.
Be well Theo. Thank you for stopping in. Take care of yourself…helen