{"id":48062,"date":"2019-02-20T11:41:55","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T19:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bassic-sax.info\/blog\/?p=48062"},"modified":"2024-06-25T15:24:24","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T22:24:24","slug":"the-sax-stick-from-saxrax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bassic-sax.info\/blog\/2019\/the-sax-stick-from-saxrax\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sax-Stick from SaxRax"},"content":{"rendered":"

How the simple Sax-Stick is saving me right now<\/h3>\n
\"Sax-Rax,<\/a>
Source: Amazon.co.uk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I am in the middle of a musical that requires my bari skills, but unfortunately my old injuries are catching up with me. I have suffered from chronic back pain ever since a career-ending ambulance call back when I was in my 20s. The pain used to be really bad, but then I developed a neurological condition and was started on medication for that.<\/p>\n

Sadly however, my back injury didn’t just go away. I just didn’t feel the deterioration in my spine thanks to the cocktail of Rx. my neurologist has me on. Fast forward 10 years to last month, when I injured my back just taking 4 horns to my tech. It was then that my doc informed me just how bad my spine is, and that I will need surgery.<\/p>\n

As I sat there absorbing the news; when she told me I shouldn’t carry anything heavy; and I should have others carry my sax cases for me\u2014I guess she never thought about the fact that I would have to wear the horn around my neck or on a harness for hours at time, thus still compressing my spine\u2014I thought forward to this musical, and how I was going to get through these 3+ hours of bari playing per night.<\/p>\n

Then I remembered something I saw a while ago from the good people at SaxRax. I remembered that they made a product for bari players: a peg of sorts.<\/p>\n

I did a bit of research, and realized that there were two versions of the Sax-Stick<\/a>. One for seated players, the other for standing ones.<\/p>\n

I reached out to my bass sax-playing buddy Paul Coats (North and South American distributor for SaxRax), and asked him to do me a huge favour. I asked if he had any in stock, and if he could ship one to me immediately. Since we were less than a month away from the production starting, and I now play a low A horn in the big band that is providing the sound track for the musical, finding an alternative to wearing the Couf’s weight was critical.<\/p>\n

Paul was great and immediately stepped up. He shipped out the Sax-stick to me, and I had it in only a few days.<\/p>\n

\"Sax-Stick,<\/a>
Source: Amazon.co.uk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve had the Sax-Stick for a couple of weeks now, and overall it does exactly what it is supposed to do. It takes the weight off my spine, and yes, I likely feel less pain from playing bari for 3 hours a night.<\/p>\n

I must admit it does take some getting used to. After playing saxophone in a certain way for 30 years, playing it like this does require a slight change in head space.<\/p>\n

In case you’re wondering how it works, here’s the instructional video from SaxRax that describes the Sax-Stick’s assembly and use:<\/p>\n