{"id":18355,"date":"2010-04-01T10:44:54","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T17:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bassic-sax.info\/blog\/?p=18355"},"modified":"2010-04-01T10:44:54","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T17:44:54","slug":"do-it-yourself-baritone-saxophone-repair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bassic-sax.info\/blog\/2010\/do-it-yourself-baritone-saxophone-repair\/","title":{"rendered":"Do It Yourself Baritone Saxophone Repair"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night I Googled a few things trying to come up with inspiration for a prank post for April Fool’s Day, when I came across what follows. You know what they say:\u00a0Truth is stranger than fiction.<\/p>\n

Have any of you checked out the ehow.com<\/a> series on saxophones? Although I didn’t read them all, of the ones I did read, most of them were so full of silliness, that\u00a0they made my eyes roll into the back of my head. While the videos might be alright, the articles\u2014at least the 5 or 6 that I read\u2014were clearly not written by saxophone players, or in the case of this one, a repair tech.<\/p>\n

How to Correct a Bent Baritone Sax<\/a><\/h3>\n

By David Michael Lord, eHow Contributing Writer<\/p>\n

1. Prepare a large, well lit\u00a0area to work on, such as a table. BTW, did you know that some of the saxophone’s pieces are quite small and easy to lose?<\/p>\n

2. Label each piece of the saxophone with masking tape before you take it off the sax. When you do take\u00a0the pieces\u00a0off, lay them on the table in order, and\u00a0have them form the shape of your horn. This will help you reassemble it in the end.<\/p>\n

3. Start by taking off the 4 main keys on the top, and 3 on the bottom. Unscrew the keys from their posts, and lay the keys and their corresponding posts out together. Once you’ve done that, continue\u00a0taking the rest of the keys off the horn. Work your way from the largest to the smallest.<\/p>\n

4. Using small pliers, remove the springs 1 by 1, by pulling on them firmly. You’ll want to lay them\u00a0“in the apparatuses that coincide with where they are located on the horn”.<\/p>\n

5. Now congratulate yourself. You’ve striped your bari down to just the body. Bends can occur in either the body tube or where the bell seams to the body. If your bari is bent in the body, you need to take it to the shop where they have special tools to fix it.<\/p>\n

Now of course you’ve hooped yourself, because you took the freakin’ thing apart. You can either: A) Try and put it back together again yourself. Or B) Pack all the pieces up very carefully to make sure you don’t miss any, and take it to the shop. Then prepare yourself for\u00a0a lecture from the tech\u00a0on how stupid you were for doing this, and why in god’s name would you have taken the springs off? What were you thinking? Blah, blah, blah… I can hear it all now.<\/p>\n

6. If the bend is where the bell seams to the body, you can bend it back yourself with just a few steps. Here’s how…<\/p>\n

Sit down with a paperback book between your legs. Place the bow of the bari on the book, and hold the bell with one hand, while wrapping your other arm around the body tube. “Push and pull at the same time in opposite directions appropriate to the bend.” It’s important that you only apply a small amount of force at first, and that you use smooth movements. In other words, don’t be jerky. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

7. Put the saxophone back together.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0Now it does need to be mentioned that saxophone repair is an art form unto itself. (Gee… Do you think?) A repair of this calibre really does require the consultation of a qualified repair tech, or you run the risk of damaging your bari beyond repair. (Heh, I’m thinking they should have put this before the article!)<\/p>\n

So OK, I’m game. I decided to try straightening the bell on my Medusa bari. Unfortunately I got so totally frustrated trying to put all the 300+ pieces back together, and never mind the regulation that was never the same, that I lost my temper… My poor horn now looks like this….<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh well… I guess I’ll need that repair tech after all! \ud83d\ude06<\/p>\n

On a serious note, I have a horn, an alto, not a bari,\u00a0that adorns my wall, that is a victim of the kind of home repair<\/em> that this article outlines. The previous owner took it all apart\u2014including the springs\u2014and couldn’t figure out how to put it back together himself. He then took it to my friend, who’s a repair tech.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately the sax was a MexiConn alto, and when my friend informed the owner that it would cost more to put the horn back together and fix, than it would cost\u00a0to replace it, the owner got so mad he smashed it up in the middle of my friend’s shop. He then walked away and left everything behind. While all the keys, springs, rods, etc have been used, I got the body for a wall decoration.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The moral of this story is: support your local saxophone repair technician. Don’t try stupid shit at home.<\/strong> It’s better to pay a few dollars and let a professional do the work on your axe, than to have to pay them a\u00a0whole lot more to fix your mistakes. Or even worse, have to buy a whole\u00a0new sax because you tried something stupid at home.<\/p>\n

\n
…this is just my blog<\/em>. <\/span> My \u201creal\u201d <\/b> website is<\/span> www.bassic-sax.info.<\/a> If you\u2019re looking for <\/span> sax info<\/strong>,<\/span> you should check it out too.<\/span>There\u2019s lots<\/em> there! <\/span>\n<\/div>\n
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