Conn 26M VIII Alto Sax overhaul

It's been awhile! Seems like there hasn't been any time to post lately, and there still isn't, so I'm just checking in with a few shots of a Conn 26M VIII alto sax that I had the privilege of overhauling last month. If you want to read a well-written and informative article about the 26M, there's one here on Matt Stohrer's blog. Matt's posts are always thoughtful and insightful. Anyway, here's mine:

This instrument was in beautiful condition, and was brought in by the son of the original owner. His father passed it along to him when he was in second grade and it was the first saxophone he played. SECOND GRADE! He must have been the most coordinated eight-year-old who's ever lived, because this thing had no dents, no significant misalignment, and no missing parts. All of the (numerous) adjustment plates were intact and only a couple were frozen, and those broke free with a reasonable amount of effort. The only notable damage was that several of the pearl rollers were cracked and broke apart from being rusted on their rods.

The overhaul was a big job, but once all the pre-padding work was done (cleaning, straightening the body, aligning posts, fitting keys, leveling and dressing tone holes), the padding process was enjoyable, and the setup after that was downright idyllic. Need to adjust a regulation? There's a screw for that. Want to to change the key heights of the entire lower stack? There are screws for that. Want to change the relationship of the touchpieces in the left hand pinky table? That's more complicated than just turning a screw, but a hell of a lot easier than any other sax. This instrument had a steep learning curve, and I don't know how long it will be until I get to apply what I learned to another 26M, but it sure was a lot of fun.

Sleeving the Upper Joint of a Clarinet Part 2: Graphite Banding

With the sleeve in place and the bore restored to a consisent and concentric shape (see previous post) I moved to the outside of the instrument. The two enormous cracks running down either side of the upper joint could still leak or even continue to grow, especially with a plastic liner that expands at a different rate than wood with temperature and humidity changes. While I usually choose to pin cracks because of the relative ease of installation and minimal cosmetic damage, that wasn't a feasible option in this case. Drilling holes for the pins would have required going through wood, then plastic, then wood again, and since different speeds are necessary for drilling plastic and wood there was a good chance of either overheating/burning the wood or melting the plastic. So installing bands, while more cosmetically disruptive, made a lot more sense. If you saw the previous post about this instrument, you saw that it came in with metal bands installed, which is an older method of doing this repair. However since the development and proliferation of graphite ribbon, sometimes also referred to as carbon-fiber, that's become the preffered material for banding. It's easier to work with and slightly more flexible than nickel, so there's less chance of it causing the bore to constrict as the wood expands and contracts over time (as had happened with this instrument).

Ideally I would have cut the channels for the bands deeper than in this example, so that they could be installed below the surface and covered with mixture of super glue and grenadilla dust, a technique I first heard about from a technician in the UK named Chris Peryagh. But since a lot of wood had already been removed from the inside of this instrument, I tried to minimize the depth of the channels and therefore keep as much wood as possible between the band and the sleeve.

Before cutting the bands, though, the top three tone holes had to be re-drilled since they were covered up by the sleeve. Cutting a new tone hole would ideally be done on a mill to ensure an absolutely straight and level cut with an even pad seat. In this case since the top half of each tone hole was still intact I was able to use that as a guide for drilling out the sleeve on a drill press.

Re-drilling the C trill tone hole. Do you like my expertly constructed clamping jig?

Wax is applied to the outside of the joint to prevent epoxy from sticking to the surface. That's the goop you can see in the top couple tone holes.

Next the channels were cut on the lathe to .040” deep. Epoxy will adhere in the channels since the waxed area was cut out.

Strips of graphite are pulled from a ribbon, approximately the same diameter as the channels. They're coated in a generous amount of plain old 2-ton epoxy. The strips are laid into the channels and pulled snug but not tight, to avoid constricting the wood. Although, that's less of a concern on this instrument since the plastic liner is less likely than wood to buckle.

After the epoxy is dry the excess is trimmed on the lathe, but not all the way to the surface. The outside of an instrument is rarely concentric with the bore (eccentric), and that's even more true of this instrument than most, so final cleanup will be done by hand.

The rest of the excess is filed off, then sanded until the bands are flush with the body of the instrument and the surface is smooth.

Finally the joint can be oiled. This is only done after the bands have been installed so that the oil won't interfere with the adhesion of the epoxy. After a week in the immersion oil bath, this joint is ready for key fitting and padding.

The joint was immersed in oil for a week, then allowed to dry for about 3 more weeks so it had a chance to fully absorb as much oil as it needed. This is how it looked at the end of that process.

After all of that was done, I ventured back in to Philadelphia to visit Mark Jacoby again, who has a set of factory reamers designed especially for cutting the necessary tapers in a clarinet. Actually, before taking on this project I didn't know that the upper joint of a clarinet is tapered at all - another thing I learned from this process. On this instrument, as with many others, there's a slight reverse taper in the top of the upper joint that transistions into a short straight section, then back out to a taper. Since the bore of the insert was cut straight on the lathe, reaming restored that original taper. No pictures of that process, sorry.

After installing all new pads and corks and making a lot of fine adjustments, this instrument has a new lease on life.

One last before-and-after, how the instrument looked when it came in, and just before packing it up in the case. 

Buffet English Horn Bonus Post 3 - Bore Repair

Prologue: I didn't do this repair. In this scenario, for once, I was the customer. David Teitelbaum did this work, and reminded me of my vast appreciation for the skills of more experienced and seasoned technicians like him. His skills and the quality of his work made the full restoration of this instrument possible. Beyond that the insight he provided into his process was immensely informative as I worked on the clarinet bore sleeve detailed in this recent post. More on that later...

Rebuilding my personal english horn was a labor of love. But it was also a labor of wanting to have a functional english horn. So after putting in that time making parts and sealing cracks and fitting keys and replacing pads and corks I ended up with an instrument that was playable. Technically playable. But it was only after putting in all that work that I looked for other underlying problems. My approach is not always methodical.

I'd observed that something was weird with the bore upper joint, but I see lots of weird stuff and didn't worry about it. Turns out I should have. The more I played the instrument, the more it seemed to misbehave. Low notes would growl as if trying to jump the octave. High notes were difficult to bring up to pitch. Intonation throughout the instrument was very inconsistent. In searching for the cause I found a crack in the upper joint that was causing problems. After that was pinned and sealed the whole range became a little easier to play. Then I made a new octave mechanism on the suspicion that the original, convoluted mechanism was causing the octave pads to not seal. That made the low notes more predictable, but not great. Something still wasn't right. Something was still horribly wrong. I continued to recheck the pad work and regulations, making adjustments wherever possible. It was a shot to my ego to not be able to play an instrument I'd put so much careful work and dedicated so much time to.

All along that weird spot in the upper joint was in the front of my mind. I knew it was probably the cause of all those problems, but was reluctant to face that fact after putting in so much time on the rest of the instrument. What if it couldn't be fixed and all of that work was for nothing? How could I have been foolish enough to put in all that work while overlooking something so serious? But like a papercut, you can't look away and wince forever. Eventually you have to open your eyes and inspect the damage. Then you get someone in New York to make you a new thumb and graft it on. Nevermind, the analogy kind of breaks down there.

Really taking a close look and seeing how horribly the bore had been gouged out I felt at once exasperation and relief. Exasperation at having my fears confirmed, that I had put so much time into an instrument with such a glaring and fatal problem; relief that maybe my work didn't suck so much after all. It looked like someone had gotten a swab stuck up there and had just gone to town with a screwdriver trying to get it out. (When David called me with his assessment, he said it looked like someone had drilled it out.) It was a surprising amount of damage. The fact that the instrument played at all was remarkable.

I was in a tough spot because I strongly suspected that this repair was beyond my abilities. (Hindsight: Yeah, it totally was.) But I had put a lot of time and effort into this instrument, and wasn't prepared to let it be a total failure yet. Fortunately a conversation with another oboe technician yielded the good news I needed: it could be fixed, but there were only two techs in the US who would attempt it. He advised calling David Teitelbaum.

So I called and shipped it off. David called me when it first arrived at his shop to talk about how intensive the work would be and the likelihood of success (he was cautiously optimistic, but I had the utmost confidence), and then I just sort of waited for another call. This was the first time I've been an instrument repair customer in at least a decade and it was unusual. Usually I know exactly what's going on with a repair, but this time, with my own instrument, I just knew that it was in the shop and would be done at some point and would play better than it had. I hate not knowing, but the experience was a reminder that I need to do a better job communicating with my customers about the progress of their repairs.

Skip to five weeks later and I got another call that the repair had been a success and everything was good to go. A few days later I was playing it and it was thrilling. David took the instrument and brought it back from the brink of uselessness. Where before I could sort of muscle my way through some passages, now it just plays. It plays easily! And consistently in tune! It's a powerful instrument. There's not a great deal of depth to the sound, but it will really project through an ensemble texture. And whatever it lacks in nuance it makes up for in ease of playability.

What could have quickly become a folly on my part was redeemed by someone who took the time to develop their skills. I always hope that people will be excited to play their instruments after I've worked on them, so it was nice to be on the other side of that transaction.

I am regularly impressed by the skills of other technicians made evident through their work, and I'm fortunate to see work that is inspiring and informative from colleagues who are willing to share their experience. In this case, hearing David's explanation and asking a few good questions was helpful in developing a strategy for the clarinet bore graft that I just completed. Between the insight I got from talking to him and Mark Jacobi, that instrument went from a lost cause (in my hands), to a long shot, to a feasible job, to a successful and completed repair. It was exciting that while David was doing that work on my instrument, I was able to do a similar (but lets face it, much simpler) repair for my customer.

It's invigorating to develop and refine a new skill that can be useful to another musician. It's exciting, too, to be that musician and know that someone who has spent years honing their skills is putting them into practice on your instrument. I was grateful at having this opportunity to be reminded of those things.

Low A Oboe

I had this fun little guy in a few weeks ago. The owner said that, among other issues, the Low A mechanism wasn't properly regulated. How he realized that, I don't know, but it certainly wasn't from all the demanding Low A passages out there. Maybe he plays a lot of full range scales.

It was fun to work on, and the owner couldn't have been more pleasant. The Low A mechanism is pretty straightforward; it's activated by a right thumb touchpiece and is designed to also close the Low B and Bb keys, so you can go straight from C to A just by depressing the thumb. The only complication is that there are two regulation screws between the Low B and Low Bb keys. One is to adjust the regulation when playing low Bb, the other (visible in the center of the following photo) is to ensure that the Low B closes when playing Low A, which is tricky because of the flexibility of the very long mechanisms. It took a couple minutes to figure out, but now I'll be ready when the next one comes across my bench in 2038.

I hate that bench. Damn, we need a better consultation space.