In the past I've used something of a cheat to regulate rental alto saxophones. Not THE Cheat mind you.
Now that I've spent the last 5 minutes checking on HomestarRunner and reading about it's decline, I'm back. Seems that site hasn't been updated since December 22, 2010. Makes me feel not so bad about not updating this for a week.
My cheat was to weaken the spring tension on the G# pad so that it wouldn't have so much lifting power when the bell keys are pressed. That made it easier to regulate F# to G#, especially if the F# wasn't perfectly level, because the regulation screw didn't need to be set as low. The trick was especially effective on Yamaha student instruments, where the F#-G# articulation arm is actually ON the F# pad cup, often causing the side of the F# pad to lift up when the G# key is activated and is trying to open.
That cheat worked pretty well (as I said, I only did it only rental instruments, and then only as a last resort when I needed to finish one quickly). Today, though, I found a problem with it. Weakening the spring tension does indeed make the G# less likely to lift up the F#, but if they are slightly under-regulated (as is often the case when using that cheat), there's nothing the stop air pressure from lifting the key. Unfortunately for me, playing a saxophone creates a lot of air pressure. While test playing an instrument today I did indeed blow open the G# key when pressing the bell keys. My cheat was exposed for the fraud that it was!
That's just a lesson that there are no shortcuts for a job well done. Looks like I'm back to carefully leveling F# pads.
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