I'm afraid I haven't been on top of photographing some of the procedures that I undergo here, but I hope to keep updating here with various things, including wonderful old horns like this one:
Now look at that beautiful purple lined case against the original lacquer on this old "American Perfection" alto saxophone. This is one of those horns I love to get, it has been played but not abused, it showed up needing very basic work. The pads were older but in fine shape, no resonators here, just plain pads with rivets! The neck fit was perfect, I needed to lower some key heights and add some silencing material, re-glue a bell key felt bumper, and that's about it. It plays wonderfully! This is a stencil horn, the split key bell design places it in the 1920s or 30s, the toneholes are soldered on to the body and beveled........this was made by Martin.
The keywork is basic but you can totally get used to it, no front F key, G# trill key, and the classic forked Eb key for the lower stack. This forked Eb is often corked or sprung shut as people tend to see it as a tedious adjustment. This horn in fact already had the key sprung shut so I left it as is. But typically if I overhaul a sax with the this forked Eb I will make it work, because its not hard to do and I like the alternate fingerings. Of course if its a customers horn then they get to choose.
Its not often I get horns in that are this old that don't need ALOT of work. Or for that matter, that play as nice as this one. The crazy thing is, these old stencils can be had CHEAP! I won't even tell you how little I paid for this, but, its almost insane, and it came from Ebay too. I'd work on these old horns ANY day of the week! Good thing I have a pile more to work in in the workshop......
