Bizarre intonation issue in 2nd register

[jools]

Hi.
Here is a question of mine (and a reply by the owner of this forum) re-posted here from www.allexperts.com. Maybe you can shed some light on this. - Thanks.
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Subject poor intonation
Question Hi

I am an experienced player of 10 or more years with hundreds of gigs and recordings under my belt. I regularly play alto, tenor and baritone.

My current tenor sax is a mid sixties beuscher. It was factory sprayed (gold) and therefore has no engraving or model number. A while ago I stopped playing this horn and it sat in a (dry) cupboard for a year or two. I subsequently sold my Otto Link and Brillhart mouthpieces. Recently I have decided to dig it out of storage and am using a cheapy Rico plastic mouthpiece and grade 4 plasticover reeds, which gets me a fine tone, full of body and crisp attack. Until I get to the second octave!.

At the point where the lower octave key gives over to the crook key (from G to A) there is a distinct tonal difference. The G sounds dark and full, whereas the A sounds 'hissy' and thin. The Bflat slightly less so and the B and C progressively less. If I close the crook octave hole, the hiss disappears (I am able to hold the note due to having a developed embouchure).

I need to know if this is a leak issue, a mis-matched set-up, damage to the crook, or any other fairly obvious technical issue, that I have not yet encountered. As a rule, I am pretty good at home-made repair, and can do basic fix-ups, but this one has got me baffled.

I do hope you can help.
Many thanks


Answer

This is obviously tricky to answer without seeing the instrument, but I suspect the problem is with the top octave hole, but could be combined with a saxophone/mouthpiece incompatibility .

I recently tried a baritone and I found almost the same issue. In this case the G was quite stuffy, but the A was thin and sharp, but OK if played without the octave key. A tech suggested that altering (probably enlarging) the diameter (or more drastically) the position of the top octave hole would probably cure the problem.

The interesting thing is that we found with a different mouthpiece, the problem almost disappeared.

I haven't tried a Rico mouthpiece, but have heard from other players that they are very good for the money. I have experienced plenty of mismatched mouthpieces, but usually with older instruments than yours.

If you have access to another mouthpiece it would be worth trying (a standard cheap Yamaha 4C would be a good test model). Also try cleaning out the octave hole, though you are correct in assuming it could also be damage to the crook. If you feel up to drilling out the hole to make it larger that might be interesting, as long as you are aware it might make things worse and you'd have to think of a way to restore it.

Sorry I don't have a cut and dried obvious solution, but I hope that helps. (NB if you post this as a question on my saxophone forum at www.breakfastroom.co.uk, there are one or two very good technicians there who may give some more advice)

 

[Bobby G]

Hi Jules, I am a relatively inexperienced (4 years self-taught) player but I had a Rico mouthpiece on my Yamaha 23 tenor for a while, and although I found it had a nice sound it did get a bit thin-sounding towards the top of the horn - at the time I put it down to a need to develop my sound better, but it may be a problem with the piece itself, especially given mpc compatibilty problems with some older horns. I'd guess the idea of trying out a different mouthpiece would be a good one, also check for any crud in the crook octave hole, although I don't think I'd want to start drilling it out. Could a slight leak somewhere further down be causing the problem? Given the change in tone is most noticeable on the A and progressively better on the Bb, B and C this could be a possibilty.

Hopefully someone like Griff will be able to come up with a more concrete suggestion.

 

[Linky Lee]

It could just be the regulation is off and your octave key on the crook is opening too much/too little and it's altering the tone and the intonation a bit because of that.

When was the horn last serviced? You could send it in for a check-over, not too expensive and I'm sure they'd fix the problem, especially if you specifically pointed it out when dropping it off.

 

[spike]

bit of a long guess, but
sounds like the lower octave key isn't closing fully when the top one opens.
Then when you let go the octave key they both close and you can hold the note.

gruss - spike

 

[Bobby G]

spike wrote:
bit of a long guess, but
sounds like the lower octave key isn't closing fully when the top one opens.
Then when you let go the octave key they both close and you can hold the note.

gruss - spike

Yep, that's a definite possibility, especially if the sax has been sat in a dry place for a couple of years. It might be worth giving everything a light lubricate to get it all running freely, in fact I remember having exactly the problem on my soprano that Spike has mentioned, and it was just a simple matter of freeing up a couple of bearings.

 

[jools]

This question has now been answered by the (extensive) work I have put in to my 'full tenor rebuild' posting elsewhere.

It would seem a combination of several issues has led to this problem.