The first thing I did was to completely disassemble the horn. Be careful if you try to do this for the first time. I've done it once or twice before, and the first time took me 3 times as long to reassemble it. The purpose was to check and see if all the rods are straight, all the posts are aligned, and all the keys turn smoothly and without friction around the rod. So far, so good. Luckily there were no serious alignment issues that would require me to have to bend any part of the horn.


My next step is to level all the tone holes with tone hole files. For this, I had to borrow tone hole files from a repair tech friend as there's only so much money I want to spend on my first overhaul attempt. I referred to Curt Altarac's article on the MusicMedic.com site on how exactly to level a tone hole:

http://www.musicmedic.com/info/articles/num_6.html

Basically you just sand down each one til there is no visible leak with the leak light, then you roll up a ball of aluminum foil and polish away the burs left from the leveler.



You can see by the pictures of the pads that this horn was well past due for a repadding.



Well, that's all for now. Next post will be about replacing all the corks, swedging, and hopefully a new pad or 2.

Yours,
Bridgesax

Tools and Materials

Pictured here are the tools I will be using for the overhaul. First off, I have the complete MusicMedic.com saxophone repair kit and a set of RooPads with Maestro Star Airtight Gold Plated Resonators. Awesome! I hope my student appreciates this. I'll install these pads with clear shellac and check it as I go with the leak light.













To the right are all the tools I have collected over the years. The essentials will be the Butane torch, the pad slicks and my new MusicMedic swedging pliers.

The next picture is all the materials I've collected. Normally I use ultrasuede layered on cork on my own horn, but I will just go with tech cork on the students horn as it is less time consuming. Also in the picture are felts, pad leather, teflon (for sliding surfaces), wooden key wedges, and MusicMedic contact cement.

MusicMedic experiment, take 1

Greetings to all the saxophoners out there. My name is Wesley. I am a professional saxophonist and an amateur saxophone repairman. In fact, you could probably call me a beginner. When I was in college, a colleague showed me some basics of repair and upkeep, namely cork replacement, fixing a weak spring, etc. To save money, I've done a lot of my own work on my horn as well as my students' horns.

Well, I've decided to take it to the next level and actually attempt an overhaul. Iv'e heard a lot about the repair kit put out by MusicMedic.com and decided to see if it can really work for a novice repairman making a first attempt at an overhaul. So, I'm creating this blog in order to document my experience with the MusicMedic kit (using it's instructions and all) and let my readers out there know if it actually works.

I have a beginning 12-year-old student who is currently renting a no-name brand throw-away horn. If everything works out with the overhaul, this will be his new horn. I'm working with an old Selmer Signet I bought off of Craigslist for cheap. The horn plays okay but has many leaks and is in desperate need of attention. My goal is to replace all the corks and pads, get rid of as much friction and play within the keys as I can, and set up the action and key heights for optimum feel, sound, and intonation.

More images to come in the next post.

Yours,
Bridgesax