{"id":31724,"date":"2012-06-02T11:06:16","date_gmt":"2012-06-02T18:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bassic-sax.info\/blog\/?p=31724"},"modified":"2024-06-01T10:57:27","modified_gmt":"2024-06-01T17:57:27","slug":"jks-angel-wing-patent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bassic-sax.info\/blog\/2012\/jks-angel-wing-patent\/","title":{"rendered":"JK’s Angel Wing Patent"},"content":{"rendered":"

The year was 1951, and the Julius Keilwerth Saxophone company filed an application with the German patent office<\/a> for a radical new type of key guard. This key guard was made out of “Plexiglas oder anderen Kunststoffen” (Plexiglas or other plastics).<\/p>\n

This plastic key guard, or angel wing<\/em> as it would come to be known, was to provide a one-piece replacement for the multiple wire or sheet metal guards that protected the low Bb, B, and C keys. The angel wing further added protection to the low C# key\u2014a key that had no protection before<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is one of the diagrams from Keilwerth’s original patent application:<\/p>\n

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

Although the patent was granted in August 1952, we know that the Plexiglas key guards were not without their problems. While these guards certainly looked striking…<\/p>\n

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

     Source: saxophon-spezialist on eBay.com<\/h6>\n

…they were prone to cracking and breaking. This is of course why the Julius Keilwerth company used the metal replacement wings<\/a> to repair the horns under warranty. These same metal guards are of course still used today, to restore vintage Toneking and The New King model horns.<\/p>\n

If you’d like to take a look at the original Julius Keilwerth patent for these angel wing key guards, you can find it on the European Patent Office website<\/a>. Be warned however, the original document is only available in German, and some of the pages are quite blurry.<\/p>\n

Given today’s technologies, it is very easy to come up with plastic compounds that will not break. I wonder why no saxophone manufacturer has picked up on Keilwerth’s design, and done something innovative. All we see is the same old, same old. The Vibratosax notwithstanding of course. \ud83d\ude09<\/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><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The year was 1951, and the Julius Keilwerth Saxophone company filed an application with the German patent office for a radical new type of key guard. This key …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[383],"tags":[151,677,683,644,654,679,322,643,31],"class_list":["post-31724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-patents","tag-german-saxophones","tag-julius-keilwerth","tag-patents","tag-photos","tag-technology","tag-toneking","tag-vibratosax","tag-vintage-horns","tag-vintage-sax"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t