an overview of the original factory setup on a selmer mark vi saxophone

hello my name is Jackson Newton from the Boston snack shop and I've made this video to share with you and show you a pristine factory original summer mark 6 saxophone and I've chosen to do this because from my personal aesthetic of prepare style I have made it my goal to do saxophone restoration as opposed to - saxophone overhauls meaning that my approach is to try and recreate as close as possible the original look and feel of these instruments as they love the factory I personally believe and again the key word there being personal that the craftsmen and artisans who made these instruments and sent them out into the world to professionals knew what they were doing I think every single choice of material on placement was intentional and well-thought-out I mean you think about it these are the same materials that were on John Coltrane saxophone on Charlie Parker saxophone and that to me is significant so this video is intended for repair technicians who maybe have not seen a completely original saxophone and in this case we're talking about summer saxophones even though I love to do more videos breakdowns of all the operational materials on other great American saxophones like cotton and King and Bishop and it's also for people who own vintage Selmer horns so they can see what the factory intended them to look like so we are going to go into a lot of detail here I really want to show you every single material on placement on the horn and the technicians I'm going to tell you the materials that I've chosen to use to replicate the original materials on the horn that we're about to see okay so in the next section of video we're going to go into much more detail on this beautiful saxophone but before we get started I just wanted to go through some basic terminology on systems of the saxophone so that we're all on the same page I'm planning on doing a more extensive video on this topic in the future which will include basic mechanical understanding of how things work on the arm but for now let's go through this briefly so starting at the top of the saxophone on the back here we have the octave key system to the left of that the palm Keys being D E flat and F and then we move into the first major stack which I call the left hand stack which consists of the front F key which activates the palm F key B this a and G and what I call the C key which is the small key which sits right below the front F the B activates the little C key and when you press a it seals not only that this but also the little C so that's a three pad system there and the G of course is independent moving down the horn we have the G sharp key which is independent and then the next major system which is the right hand stack which consists of what I call the F sharp key F E and D F activates the F sharp as this E and E and at the bottom of the horn we have our C sharp B and B flat key which are all worked by what I call the left hand pinkie stack G sharp the B flat and C sharp on the side there then we move into our smaller systems being the C and E flat key which sit right here also referred to as the right hand pinkie stack a chromatic or side of sharp and then our side Keys D flat C and the high E and that's it now let's take a closer look at all the materials which make the horn play and feel the way it does so the first material that we need to talk about when it comes to factory summer saxophones are the resonators there are two different styles of resonators that some are used from about 56,000 to right around 80,000 summer was using a nickel-plated brass resonator that they called the tone ex resonator tio NEX this is a two-piece resonator this receiver which is internally threaded to receive a screw which would go in the back of the pad the resident of course going on the front of the pads this part is actually soldered on to this part and this is a heavy this is a hefty piece right here and of course this was the original brass washer and then the screw right at 80,000 they started using a plastic or nylon resonator in this you know kind of chocolate brown color which did not have a washer just had a slightly larger let me get a little focused they're absolutely larger brass backing screw interesting to note that if you are restoring vintage summer that has partially original resonators who are swapping them out the threading on both of the smaller screws used on the summer tone X or metal resonators and the threading used on the plasma modes are identical so those can be interchanged if you happen to lose these little guys which I do all the time so the reason for the change was pretty obviously a financial decision on summers part this is so much easier to make and cheaper material but interestingly enough I'll mention that I did hear from an old-timer that the part of the part of the reason for the change was just the weight difference oftentimes on tenor saxophone in the right hand you'll have keys bounce which means that if you release the key and it goes to a turning position without any kind of finger pressure it'll flutter a little bit and often that has to do with not only the shape of the key foot it's already a technical here but it's kind of interesting but also the weight of the key cup itself and the materials in it meaning the pad the adhesive and the resonator and again these resonators weigh considerably more than the nylon boosters that they change to at a later date and again this repair technician told me that one of the reasons they change was to lighten up the key cups both for the action and to prevent that bouncing so the next step is the summer pad which you know they went through several different manufacturers but they always retain this beautiful orange tanned kid leather look to them and you know they typically measure about five millimeters in thickness and see on the back that they used an amber colored shellac which is a natural adhesive made actually from insects that was borrowed from the furniture industry shellac which I have a stick right here is when it's mixed with solvent like alcohol can be used as a varnish arm or a finish on wood so again I said that I would share what I use to replicate these styles of resonators in my own prepare work for metal resonators I prefer the ones made by Eadie Krause who has copied these pretty well if you can afford it the company reso tech makes a very very fine replication which includes even a soldered back like this one which are absolutely beautiful and they match the summer style perfectly for the plastic resonator I like the furries brand which is a melting style which means that there is no screw you actually melt it into the the back of the pad but they match the doming in the color of these resonators perfectly for pads again I think furries has the closest thing there's another company called admire which is a little hard to track down that they make another very very similar summer style pad and in fact used to produce the pads for summer I believe in the late 60s in the 70s for shellac which again is the adhesive I use on the back of the pads I like the merit stick shellac which you can buy on furniture websites because this color which I believe is the amber color matches the color of the shellac on the back of all the summer pads that I've seen all so before we get into the saxophone itself I do want to mention one other thing about the pad because there's certainly a trend in modern repair work to use very hard thin saxophone pads and you'll see when we look at the saxophone that these pads have you know a pretty thin layer of shellac on the back which means that they're sitting inside the key cups pretty deeply giving the overhang which is a term that I use that represents the amount of pad hanging out of the key cup itself pretty thin so they look thin but in actuality dispenser or on the thicker side and even though you know the newest original mark six pads that I've had are from the seventies and the leather is dried up you can tell this is a very supple leather and that the felt was not black hard it was more of a medium weave 100% wool felt being the material that's in between the leather and the cardboard backing and I just wanted to comment that you know summer knew that the tone holes or chimneys coming off the saxophone that the pads were standing on were not perfect and I think that they chose these pads for a reason to make up for the imperfection satisfied we have pads made out of leather and that metal is to make up for imperfections in the tonal and you can see look at the seat of this pad I mean it is it is a solid seat the seat being the ring this is where the resonator was I took that out to show you more of the leather but this ring here is where the pad was actually sealing on a tone hole chimney on the saxophone and that is a that is a solid seat which is why often when I get original summer saxophones in the shop they still play great on their original pads because they are seated so strongly over those cone holes just another thought okay now we have the terminology together let's go through each individual system on this horn and look at the choices that some are made in 1965 from materials so start with top the horn I always notice this gray tubing up here it's just a classy touch all the inner workings of the octave mechanism are regulated with natural cork I always like to point out and this one joint that the cork is placed on the interior part not the exterior it's a small detail but to me there are no such things when we're talking about these forms for the palm Keys you see cork under the D E flat and F to control the height in the field with the beveling on the cork on that E flat key just shows you that somebody really cared about they were doing that day moving on to the left clothes you see we have green felt under the front F key and under the a covering with this and on the back of those key feet a and B you see we have green felt controlling the regulation to the little C key and natural cork pressing against the body of the horn which controls the feel and overall key height the side C and E flat both have natural cork under their key feet now moving over to the left hand pinky stack C this is all green felt on the Tanners interestingly you'll see that this particular piece will be court and there will be green felt on body of the horn as opposed to just one piece of green felt like you see on the Elton's the G sharp and this regulation screws which hang over the G sharp key from the F sharp key in the right hand our natural cork let's take a second and look at the overhang or thickness of the pads and the key cups here again I showed you them off the horn and this is what they look like in the horn very stand very crisp looking which is an indication that the summer factory was using just a thin layer of that shellac adhesive on the back of the pads the chromatic F sharp key has a piece of natural cork underneath it though I have seen felt I think it just depended on who was working that day what materials were hanging around for the Caged keys the E flat C B and B flat we see green felt in the bumpers now the back of the right hand you see we have again natural cork under the key seat just like the left hand green felt on top and there's actually a small disc of green felt on the body of the horn underneath that cork which controls the bounce and the feel of each of those keys so that it's every material on this mark six from 1965 ok so briefly here are the materials that I've chosen to mimic the ones that we just saw on the mark six which again it's just felt than just cork and it's amazing but these two materials um to me represent all you need to make a saxophone to quiet feel great and hold its regulation for a long time so for felt I choose a green of course 100% wool felt and there are lots of different grades of felts out there the stuff you're going to get at the craft store or that's very inexpensive is typically a blended felt made out of bray on which is almost like a plastic and difference in using 100% wool is that it's much stiffer it's much more resilient you can even sand it so this is beautiful stuff and I believe this is what they were using on the laurens it holds its shape and its dimension considerably better than cheaper felts so one problem I have though is that it only comes in one thickness from jails methods pretty thick this for instance is the size that you would put underneath the Pearl to cover the B or the Biscay rather but it's too thick to use on the back of the key feet for regulation of the back bar in the F sharp or the little C in the left hand so what I do to get over that is I actually you know what I'm doing overall I'm prepping an overhaul rather I'll cut out a postage stamp-sized piece of this back it with contact cement wait for it to dry and then skive off the top layer which you know trying to get about half this thickness is what I like to use and for razor blades to do that I use the Jim persona which are super super sharp and great for cutting this stuff for Cork I just use the highest quality natural cork I can get which I get from furries cork you know to this day still amazes me as a material it's perfect um and there's a reason that they chose this because it is just the quintessential balance between firmness and softness firm enough when it's of this level of quality that it's going to retain its shape and thickness but soft enough that it won't click even at a very thin sanded piece against metal animal bounce so this is you know just beautiful stuff to me sounds silly but that's how I feel for adhesive I try as much as I can to use liquid shellac I have to admit it is kind of a point to use I make this using flakes and denatured alcohol it forms a paste which I apply with paint brushes or acid brushes to the work you have to heat it up to burn off the alcohol which then just leaves the shellac adhesive which grips whatever materials you're using and this is what they use on all those horns up until the very end you don't see contact scent even though it was available I believe in the 70s when they stopped the marks right they only used liquid shellac so I'm learning to become better at using this but I want to because to me it represents that final detail the final step in trying to mimic the original summer overall okay so that's it um I hope that whether or not you're a repair technician or an owner of and summer saxophone that this was at least mildly informative I believe that you should know what the factory intended whether or not you choose to do that and your own work or have that done term saxophone it is entirely up to you like I said this is the way that I like to approach my repair work and again I give credit to a lot of people for moving me in this direction this is certainly not an original idea you know one of the first conversations I had with the great New York repairmen bill singer he said to me I want to make the saxophones look like nobody was there and that has really stuck with me so once again thank you for watching and like I said I've got some other stuff coming down the pipeline in terms of videos so please stay tuned

Channel: Boston Sax Shop

Views: 17,502

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Id: 2gi3gJS9OAI

Length: 18min 30sec (1110 seconds)

Published: Sat May 13 2017