Full tenor rebuild

[jools]

Ok guys and gals. Moving on from 'bizarre upper octave issues' I have decided to 'bite the bullet' and attempt a full rebuild. Just to get to grips with the engineering of a saxophone.

I hasten to add, this isn't my Buescher, its a 90's Arbiter. It's been hammered by a student for a few years now, and is - for all intents and purposes - dead. So, I had no qualms in stripping it down.

Now then. My intention is to de-lacquer the body. I want it to have the pallour of a MKVI. I know this is asking a lot, but I thought it might be fun. Does anyone have any experience of doing this? At the present time, I have a cardboard box of numbered parts and a body in two parts. I am going to Nitromors the body, but I heard a story about someone who put the horn in an oven to get the brass to oxidise and look "aged"

What do you reckon?

(any tips and hints will be carefully considered, and when it's done I will post photos of the results)

 

[Bobby G]

Hi Jools, have a look at Steve Howard's excellent website, he describes how to delacquer a horn - basically it involves slathering Nitromors all over the horn and leaving it in a bin bag for a couple of days or somesuch. Good luck with the rebuild, presumably if the horn is dead it'll need a full repad?

 

[jools]

Nah - on first inspection, the pads are good. Hardly worn. In fact, all that was really wrong was is that the balancing was way out. Screws loose, corks missing etc. Everything else is in fine fettle.

Do you have a link for Steve Howard on this issue? - I checked his website and it's immense!. Couldn't find it.

 

[phil_edwards]

Jools wrote:
Do you have a link for Steve Howard on this issue? - I checked his website and it's immense!. Couldn't find it.

Couldn't find a link on the site, but I know it's a fact as he told me about it sometime ago.

I'm going over there this morning for a quick fettle of the Martin (oh-err)

regards, Phil

 

[Linky Lee]

I took my Martin saxophone apart and did some cleaning work and removed some tarnish and other grimy things, then I re-assembled it all and so forth. It was really interesting and helpful to know how a saxophone works and has helped me fix problems I've come across 'on the road' with mine and other people's horns. I now carry a small repair kit I put together with me now.

I got some repair work done on it after I'd fiddled around and wanted some customizing done.

 

[jools]

Hey Linky. Good observation there. I reckon that, as players, we need to know the mechanics of these 'drainpipes'. Not only so that we can execute simple repairs on our own and students horns (saving money and time) but also to recognise when things are starting to go awry. That slow process that happens when we aren't looking til one day it just farts in your hands and gives up the ghost. The resulting 'compensations' that we had made to play through the faults become all too obvious when we get it back from repair. Bit like having a new clutch fitted. Hahaha.

As for the tenor and the stripping, I took the whole thing apart on Tuesday. Labelled it all up, screw by screw and put the bits into bags, after cleaning general grime and stripping the lacquer off the finger-touch metal (palm sets etc)- just so that they will oxidise in time in keeping with years of use to match the body.

The body actualy came into two parts. The glue holding the bell had perished and it came apart very easily. Using a cheap tin of Nitromors I coated the the thing and left for about half an hour. Then I dumped it in the bath which I had filled with hot soapy water and a thin solution of Oven Cleaning fluid. (I also forgot how toxic and heady those fumes are! do NOT try this at home kids without a responsible adult in supervision and adequate ventilation/ insurance)

The lacquer came off in sheets! - it was disgusting. It had the feel and thickness of cling film (food wrapping film for our international readers) More disturbing, was the fact that it had a pinkish colour. Not unlike contraceptive rubber! Having scrubbed both parts down with a pan scrub, I rubbed it down with wire wool (brillo) and finished with a scouring pad to give a 'burnished' texture.

Because I am generally disappointed with modern saxes not having decorative engraving on them, I decided it needed some. I don't know if you are familiar with this make (Arbiter) but all it has is the name and a tiny logo to one side which seems to have been laser etched into the very top surface layer of metal. I came up with a name, designed a new logo and adapted a classic Tattoo design of some honeysuckle to run up the bell to left and right. I got these printed out at a copy shop onto transparent sticky back and placed them on the bell in position. Using a scalpel, I then cut out the design to trace the image into the metal in preparation for a jeweller to finish off the engraving with a proper tool.

It's been a busy couple of days!

 

[Bobby G]

Whaddya mean 'til one day it farts in your hands'? Mine does that every day....

Totally agree about understanding a bit more about the mechanics of your horn, and not being afraid to get in there and make adjustments or do a bit of preventive, with the warning that before you start making too many adjustments be aware of where you started off.

 

[Tenor Sax]

You have been a busy lad Jools.

Looking forward to the pictures.

Chris

 

[jools]

heyup.

Well, just a footnote here about the build quality of the Arbiters.

Underneath the glittery clingfilm, the brass is a very bright yellow and - it would seem - quite thin. It must be a coating on top of a copper / tin based mixture. I took one of the bell keyguards to test out some ideas on. First I soaked it in vinegar to get some acid reaction, which caused some rust spots to occur !. Then I put it on the cooker hob and heated it up until it glowed. When it cooled, it seems as though the brass had burned away as it now has darker patches of a coppery colour. In general, the metal of the keywork has a fairly rugged feel, and quite sturdy, unlike some Chinese saxes (which I have inadvertently broken in the past!) The body and bell however is quite a narrow guage a lot like the middle period Martins.

I'm not sure of the brand, but the pads actually look like fairly high quality ones, with a good consistent surface and nice depth. However they are held in place with tin resonators and a screw, which in most cases had rusted with use. This can't be good, as in normal playing it's a design fault that would go un-noticed until proper damage had occurred to the pads.

The worse aspect has to be the corks and felts, which have now almost ALL fallen off with handling. I now have a bag of random flotsam!. The glue used in assembly is hopeless and is like a brittle brown coloured paper-glue. No wonder that these horns go out of playability so quickly.

More updates as they occur. 🙂

p.s. Oh, and I managed to break the post holding the octave key to the crook right off! the soldering wasn't across the whole width. It's starting to look a lot more complicated than I first thought. hahha.

 

[jools]

Oh dear. Well, ladies and gentlemen, as a professional obsessive compulsive the last few weeks have been something of a nightmare round my house.

It started with my dismantling a student Arbiter tenor, and ended with me totally dis-assembling, delacquering two tenors and an alto!

All credit to Stephen Howard for some sound advice.

The Arbiter.
This is now fully stripped. The bell has gone off to an engraver to be decorated. The rest is bagged up in it's case till it's done.

The Yamaha 23
This was a 'wild card' in this whole project. It had sat in a corner of the room for a while doing nothing and looking unloved and so I thought it deserved a new facelift. Taking it apart was easy, as was getting the lacquer off. Putting it back together was a breeze too, and I have to say it sounds CONSIDERABLY BETTER for being taken back to the raw metal. The 23s were a good 'standby' for lots of players as well as being a pretty good student model. They benefit from being well made of study metal. This has gone from being a scratched and 'scabby' junk shop bargain, to being a sleek and stylish pearl. 🙂

The Buescher Aristocrat.
Having experimented with various techniques I decided to tackle the horn that was giving me problems. As I mentioned, this sax had been factory sprayed gold, but what I didn't realise was that in the process (i.e. on the factory line) they had coated the inside bore. Having got the layers of gunge out of the horn, I treated all the metal to a full rub down using scouring pads, to get a gentle 'brushed' finish. Re-assembling it was easy, but I had to replace a few corks that I had broken off. I then took a trip to Bradford, to Woodwind Exchange to pick up a sax (a King Super 20 Silversonic no less! what a beast!) for a student of mine and took the opportunity to get a new mouthpiece: an Otto LInk 7. Back home I found that the process of delacquering (inside and out) combined with generally cleaning (body and crook) and the new mouthpiece has pretty much cleared up the 'fizzing' on the octave key. Oh, I also found a website for an engraver's in the US that has an archive of artwork for vintage horns. So, I am getting this one decorated up in the style of a 'classic' Arostocrat.

As promised, if I can get my act together, I shall post a gallery of pictures to show all this flurry of activity.

stay tuned. 🙂

 

[phil_edwards]

Don't do it by half, do you? Great work, best way to learn. Look forward to the pics.

regards, Phil

 

[Bobby G]

I'm slightly confused, is the Yamaha 23 the second tenor or the alto? I have one of those as my only tenor, it's very 'well-used' as it's probably about 35 years old but plays great and is very solid and reliable. The lacquer is quite yellow on the body tube, but the key cups are all silver and I don't know what the material/finish is for these.

Did you strip only the body and crook, or the whole thing? What difference did it make to the sound?

 

[jools]

Hey Bob

yep, the Yam is the alto. They are built like tractors! in fact very similar in 'feel' to the Mark 6s - all chunky and tight. The lacquer on mine was very yellow too, almost like a lemon colour, but when it came off it was like cellophane! in huge strips. It was like simply unwrapping it. The keywork on mine is also 'silver' but I reckon it's nickle (or chrome) plate. As I said I used kitchen scourers to completely rub down the brass, which is now a sweet golden colour, including the crook and I also rubbed down the silver keys - cups and rods - and they now have a finish like those brushed titanium Apple Macs. Sweet.

I can honestly say it has TRANSFORMED the sound! Seriously. I had doubts if it would make a difference, but it is now not only a 'wider' and 'fuller' sound, but it is also very warm and dark. I took it over to Stuart (my regular repair and sales guy) who agreed that it had not only significantly improved the sound but had also added quite a bit of value.

If you can, I'd recommend you have a go with yours. You won't be dissapointed (unless you prefer the 'glassy' sound as it is)

🙂

 

[jools]

Hey guys and gals, here's

The finished Yamaha 23

tho, for some reason it takes you to a 'broken link' page, but its not. (unless anyone has a fix for my poor html)

 

[Mikec]

It looks terrific. Will it tarnish without the lacquer?

 

[jools]

Oh, I do hope so. That's what I'm looking forward to. 🙂

 

[spike]

Looks great Jools - good job - I like those old one piece bell key guards.
Look forward to seeing the results of your other projects. gruss - spike

 

[bobk]

It looks as if bbcode, which allows you put some limited html into messages on this forum, isn't terribly clever at dealing with new lines. If the closing "]" isn't on the same line as the opening "[ url=a.web.page" then when bbcode translates the link into html it inserts an html newline command <br> where the line break was. The <br> get treated as if it was part of the web address (which, of course it isn't). Normally this would mean you'd end up with a 'page not found' error. The Flickr web server is clever enough to make a good guess at the page you really intended to link, so, because you were linking to a flickr page, we can still see the images (nice).

cheers,

Bob

Jools wrote:
Hey guys and gals, here's

The finished Yamaha 23

tho, for some reason it takes you to a 'broken link' page, but its not. (unless anyone has a fix for my poor html)

 

[Col9]

Thats gonna look amazing in few months. Nice job

Col.

 

[Bobby G]

That looks great Jools! I wonder if my tenor could look that good too