General Repairs and Maintenance

Minor Service:

Brush off dust, clean tenons, replace 2-3 pads, recork keys as required, general clean up, oil and regulate, test play.

General Service:

Remove all keywork, clean up keys and body, remove old oil from keywork, clean octave pipes, repair tone holes and replace 4-8 pads as required, recork keys and tenons as required, straighten any bent keys, remove excess play in keywork, oil and regulate, test play.

Full Overhaul:

As for general service, plus completely dismantle instrument, hand polish keys and body, replace all pads and recork all keys.

Miscellaneous Services

Broken Keys:

Clean up the broken surface, carefully align and silver solder. The solder joint is then filed, sanded and polished so that in most cases the repair is invisible.

Tuning:

Tuning work is always done with the customer testing as I work. A combination of adjusting pad clearances and hole sizes improves the intonation a great deal.

Before

After

This is a modification I designed and made to improve the ergonomics on the front F key on a vintage Mark VI alto.

I have found that using a combination of leak light and feeler gauges gets the best results when seating sax pads. The holes are always carefully levelled and polished to eliminate sticking pads.