Knowing When It's Time To Get Your Saxophone Fixed - with Bob Reynolds

does your saxophone need some work let's find out in today's video I'm gonna show you some things you could look out for yourself on your own instrument to determine whether or not you need to go visit the repair technician while hanging out with my friend Bob Reynolds last week we got to talking about gear and at what point the condition of our equipment begins to adversely affect our play you don't notice gradually if it's not a major problem just things deteriorate on an on a slow and gradual basis so you're not really aware of it when we get there can I look at your horn real quick I'm gonna point out a few typical problems that I found on Bob's horn that many of you watching may have right now on your own saxophones if any of you are overdue for the repair shop let us know in the comments below what repairs you need to get done and why you're there drop me one of these if this video gets 2,000 likes I'll upload two next week I took a look at Bob's horn because he told me he was having trouble with his low B now I used to work as a repair technician and I still do my own horns and the occasional quick job for friends but I'm no longer doing repairs so don't ask I remember going to take my saxophone into Amelia Lyons in Boston who was the last person to overhaul my tenor and I still have somebody at last reading I have a green pad sometimes the red yeah yeah he did a few different colors from a knight I don't even know if I want to say had this cuz it date myself but yeah from like the 90s late 90s like 98 or something when I was in New York cats would always come in with their horns from Amedeo yeah this pad needs to change look at that man you can't play beat white you wonder why you keep yeah maybe it's not my mouthpiece maybe it's that I just literally recorded an my newest album on that mess last week this one is obvious take your horn out and visually inspect all of the pads if you've got any wear the leather is torn or there's a rip you're gonna have to get that changed when your pad closes on the tone hole it needs to make as close to a perfect seal as possible and a torn pad is just not gonna get the job done I'm so gun shy about repairman though because I I've had I know multiple bad experiences where you know it's like a it's like a dentist you go in and every repair manager will say we'll just kind of poop on whatever the person before them did this is something just about every repair technician is guilty of myself included have you ever taken your saxophone to a new repair shop and while they're looking it over they just keep telling you how badly the last guy messed it up it's not good who the hell changed these pads [Music] it's gonna be a big job I have certainly seen my share of poor quality work on some of the horns that have come across my bench not everyone who's repairing saxophones is doing so at a very high level but if you think about it once you've found a good technician you stick with them like a good dentist so usually if you're going to a new repair shop it's probably because you're not so happy with the work done by the last one and here's some other things to keep in mind good repair technicians are in short supply they're going to be expensive and you're probably gonna have to wait a while before they can look at your horn don't don't do what I do with your saxophone you should you should treat it better than I treat it this is a problem on all mark sixes you know this when you press this one yeah these two because this key kind of goes out of adjustment a lot it's not too bad right I brought my mark six in today to show you up close what I'm talking about when you press down the a key in the left hand there are three keys moving together and they all need to come down at the exact same moment this is an area that can go out of adjustment pretty easily and cause havoc with your instrument since it's affecting all the notes from a Down which is most of them so one of the first things you want to look for if you feel like you've got some significant leaks in your horn is if all of these keys are closing at the same time when you press down this 80 with light pressure if you can see with the naked eye that these keys are not coming down at the same time then you need to get it checked out there are a few things that play here with this adjustment so it's not something I would recommend you try to fix yourself what often happens is you may get a new felt installed here and after a week or so of playing that felt compresses which will cause the Bisbee flat key to not close together with the a key the cork on the key foot that actions the C pad up here can also get compressed and results in that pad not closing all the way sometimes the metal is a little bit on the softer side and can just go out of adjustment from being laid hard here's a simple way you can check if these pads are sealing take a cigarette paper and cut a strip like this then place it inside the tone hole close the key gently and pull the paper out you should get some resistance when pulling that paper out and you can move this all around the pad Cup to see if the resistance is consistent everywhere what you'll find a lot of the time is that one of these keys closes a little bit better than the other one this is a simple adjustment and fix for any repair technician and it's one of the first places we're gonna look when we're checking out your horn we get into this yeah that's what I'm saying is like wiggle so this needs to be switched okay this has got wiggling it this has got a lot yeah that's a lot that's like that key because this is already a key that's a problem okay all saxophones cuz you know it's closing this one and it's that combination there that's terrible hmm that's a lot of move oh yeah you can get and this is like this is like lateral movement but it's also you know it's moving in two in two dimensions not just side to side but like right like that this is something that is overlooked way too often by repair technicians unfortunately changing a pad on a key that has a lot of mechanical play in it is a waste that pad is never gonna seat properly and it's always going to leak the only way to get a pad to seal properly on a tone hole is number one you've got to have a good quality professional pad it's got to go into a key cup that is flat it's got to come down on a tone hole that is perfectly leveled and the key has to move and hinge without any extra movement side-to-side or like this what this worn needs is a proper proper overhaul where you do all them the key mechanisms right and then once the mechanisms are perfect and then you do the pads some repair shops say they're going to do an overhaul but what they're really doing is just a reap and a reap add is when you change all the pads in a saxophone while an overhaul is something entirely different and overhaul you're going to do all the necessary bodywork fix any soldering that need attention you're going to make sure all the tone holes are level you're gonna clean every part of the saxophone inside and out so there's no odors or any who knows what growing on it then you're gonna remove all of the mechanical play in all the keys and get everything mechanically as perfect as possible then you change the pads and the quarks and the felts and and there's a whole process of setting it up getting all of the combinations working just right getting the key heights just right and playing it in a little bit so that everything settles and when it goes back to the customer it's really supposed to be as good or better than new it's a big expensive job that takes a long time now to be fair to whoever did the repairs on Bob's horn in the recent past Bob may not have been able to leave it with them the necessary amount of time for them to get to all those things but mechanical play in the keys can be corrected without doing a full overhaul in the past for clients who may not have had the money to get a full overhaul or the time to leave the horn with me for a week or more what I've done is just do one hand at a time so I would for example take Bob saxophone and take all the keys off the right hand correct all the mechanical play so everything's moving as it should then replace all the pads and quarks and felts then on a future visit Bob could come in and I would do the same thing with the left hand and already with those two visits you've got the most important parts of the saxophone well sorted out on a third visit I could take the play out of all the palm keys replace those pads and address any other issues that needed to be checked out ideally on an old horn like that you would want to get a proper overhaul done but there are alternatives in case you don't have the time or the money all at once I've had a few different repair people say kind of put me off the overhaul thing they're like ah you should I think you should wait a little because everybody's like once you do it it changes everything so much everybody seemed to be a little reluctant to yeah it changes everything by making it a lot better if the end result of a full overhaul on your saxophone isn't a significant improvement in how the instrument plays then you're doing it wrong one area that can make a noticeable difference when you get the horn back from an overhaul is the key Heights some players like their keys open a little bit more than you know the factory defaults opening so if you have a preference for your key Heights you could just talk to whoever he's doing the overhaul and say listen when I get this horn back I want those keys to be opening the same amount because I want it to feel the same when I get it back you have a oh wait don't even tell me you don't have it in why what is that for well there's plenty of space up here we don't want that space why send Bob Reynolds one of the new caps oh he might be the guy who does this I think he did send me something and maybe he sent me a gap cap yeah maybe I don't know because I mean this is a good case so it's not a big problem it's not moving you don't Wow it does it does I mean when you're on the plane you're traveling when you're putting it down just checking the hotel and the whole thing you know over the course of a tour yeah it's moving and all that movement he's not good that captain but real on makes your gonna basically push this so it's just ah wedged okay here you see what I mean yeah yeah yep cuz mine is just I just was like I always thought oh well like this isn't touching anything so what's the big deal you don't have to shell out all the money to buy a fancy gap cap from key leaves although they are pretty awesome but having no end plug at all is really bad if your horn falls while it's in the case which happens from time to time to everybody right it's gonna move on the impact quite a lot and the more it moves the worse it is for potential damage think of a car accident with a very loose seatbelt I want to thank Bob Reynolds for being such a good sport and allowing me to make an example of his saxophone to be clear Bob's horn is in much better condition than those of many other professional sax players out there make sure you hit the like button if you've watched this video up to this point and get yourself subscribed if you aren't already at 200,000 subscribers I'm gonna do something cool but I'm not sure what yet so leave suggestions in the comments what should i do at 200,000 subscribers thanks for watching and hopefully see you next week with two videos where did that little there was a little flag on the flag there like we give up what do you want to be told you where to go

Channel: Better Sax

Views: 69,480

Rating: 4.9858999 out of 5

Keywords: saxophone, sax, sax lessons, saxophone lessons, saxophone repair, sax repair, bob reynolds, jay metcalf, bettersax, better sax, tenor saxophone, selmer mark vi, selmer mark 6, pro saxophone player, saxophone maintenance, taking care of saxophone, how to fix a saxophone, broken saxophone, replacing sax pads, how to change saxophone pad, replace sax cork, replacing a sax felt, time to fix your horn, horn repair, saxophone technician, sax repairman, woodwind repair

Id: xEYTfDS9p5w

Length: 13min 0sec (780 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2020