Things have been rather busy here in Bassic Saxville—too busy in fact. Many folks who read my articles regularly know that I took a PT job with my tech a couple of days a week as his Education Rep. Then COVID hit, and my job shifted to web-based work as I was one of the people who helped David create his new online store.
Things have been rolling along quite well for the last couple of years like this until about 6 weeks ago, when our FT sales person resigned his position. This has left the shop’s owner looking for a couple of new people, since our PT repair assistant also left in September to go back to university, but hadn’t been replaced yet. See where I’m going with this yet?
For the last 6 weeks I have had to work in the shop a couple of days each week while David has tried to find new staff. He did find someone to fill the PT repair assistant spot, so here’s hoping that person works out. 
Although I am staying at a friend’s place a couple of nights a week so I don’t have to do the commute back and forth in the idiocy of Metro Vancouver traffic, my neurological symptoms are none the less still starting to act up more than they did before. I am carefully having to balance a lot of things to avoid having a relapse.
That said, on the other hand I do love being in the shop a couple of days a week. Between the interesting bunch of pro to amateur players who frequent us daily; the teachers and students and I get to meet; and the sometimes weird bunch of horns I get to photograph and research; no two days are ever the same.
Upcoming Keilwerth SX90 & Toneking Reviews
Which bring me to what I’m currently working on in the shop: some reviews of the the new SX90R Keilwerth alto and tenor saxophones we recently got in; some reviews of my 1957 Keilwerth Toneking alto and tenor; and then a review of the horns vis-Ã -vis tenor to tenor, and alto to alto.
Last week I started working on the review of the SX90R tenor. When I first played it a few weeks ago, I hadn’t played my Toneking in a while. I knew the horns were different like night and day, but how different are they really? It turns out incredibly different.
Last week I brought my Toneking in to the shop so that I could begin comparing the two. Given that Mine was built in 1957, and the SX90R is circa 2022, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that A LOT has changed in 65 years of saxophone R&D, production, and manufacturing.
I won’t go into any of the details yet—since I don’t want to give away the endings 😉 —but if you look at previous reviews I have done, you’ll get the idea of how all of the reviews will be structured. There will of course be lots of pics, but this time I am going to try and get some decent sound/playing samples. I believe I have found an app that will allow me to record some better audio using my iPhone.
It should go without saying that all this work for David has put any efforts on my own site on the backburner. I haven’t researched anything further, nor have I collated any of the data I already have—or even checked my emails in weeks. I also haven’t responded to comments about my work on some sax forums.
This in-shop work will settle down over the coming weeks (again with the fingers crossed 😆 ) and then I will be able to do my couple of days mostly from home again. This will allow me to catch up on what I am doing on my things again. I have lots of JK history I need to finish, and even the Graslitz stuff I already did needs quite a bit of tweaking.
However, before I get to all that, there will be some reviews coming of the both the vintage and brand new Keilwerths. Keep an eye out on this space. I think you will be surprised by what you see and read. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. 😛
