Here's a really neat old Frank Holton C melody saxophone I just finished a full restoration on.
This horn is bare brass including the keys which was a very common finish in this era. It looks great!
I did everything you can imagine with this horn, cleaning, straightening, dent work, key work, new pads, regulation, adjustment, neck work (the neck was pulled down of course).
The end results were excellent. The horn plays and sounds great, ergonomically it is more comfortable to play than last Buescher C melody through the shop. The key work setup is pretty comfy really. Although it does have the curved tenor style neck it is possible to find a good playing position (which many folks complain about with the curved necks).
One thing to mention about this horn, it came with the original white pillow pads, VERY soft pads with no rivets, super soft felt backing, and only a stitch of thread holding the center of the pad down. Taking the horn apart I realized I may have been the first person to disassemble this instrument in over 90 years! Very cool.
The original case is very nice, the inside is corduroy!!! The original mouthpiece I had opened up a bit by my friend Peter Deley in Portland. It has the typical muted C melody sound and is neat but this horn really opens up with a medium chamber tenor mouthpiece, which is how we' ve been playing it.
Also note some of the extra key work. As is typical of 20's horns there is the forked Eb mechanism (which I set up to be fully operational) and a G# trill key (this one is not part of the lower stack which is not common), but also has an extra key on the side for an upper C/D trill!
This one isn't for sale as of now. Too cool!
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