Tech/maintenance hazards of de-lacquering

[jools]

Well, I was going to update a previous thread that I had started, but couldn't find it. However, what I have to say might stand on it's own even though it's an update.

Last Christmas (for anyone new to the BR, or who didn't read about it) I took the radical decision to totally strip down, clean, restore and de-lacquer my 1960's Buescher Aristocrat tenor. It had been sold from new with a metallic gold enamel finish. The job went smoothly, and the finished result was a shiny, bright golden bare brass horn.

By the middle of March, the brass had started to go a wonderful shade of deep gold, however, I was increasingly aware of 'spots' and 'smears' where it had been handled. I can only presume that my saliva (and various residual chemicals around the sax) were starting to react with the surface, and I am now left with a finish that has 'finger marks', 'dribble runs' and splashes all over the body and bell.

I'm not too concerned, as I am confident that in time (as it gets darker) they will blend into the general 'grunge' of the finish. However, I felt it worthy of mention to anyone who was considering stripping their horn, of some of the possible side effects, outside of the 'perceived' tonal benefits... -be prepared for the unexpected to happen, and if you strip it - live with it (there's no going back!)

I'm happy though, made the right choice. The gold 'hammerite' look was horrible!

 

[daveysaxboy]

Well said,i had 2 MK6'S year's ago that were bare and to me they looked great,the alto was from Cape Town and it must of been the heat coz it was so brown,wish i still had it.i dont mind the green mould and spit mark's,i think it look's better that way and i have had a few silverplate horn's and my sop is silver which i love but new gold is not my bag but each man to his own and that's why i stripped my 66r,mostly for the look's in time and the tone 2nd as i am so happy already with the sound. 😉

 

[jools]

Hey Dave, I'm right with you on all that. I've had a few mk6s and I couldn't have imagined them all bright and shiny. For a short while, I had a Super 80 which I hated! -hated so much and with a passion for so many reasons.

What's puzzled me, is that I delacquered my old Yam 23 at the same time, and it hasn't been a victim of the 'spit patterns' ! it is still an all-over dull colour, going gently brown. So, I am wondering if a lot of this effect is down to the individual composite of brass.

 

[daveysaxboy]

Your right i think,i also stripped my cheapy selmer prelude alto and it's so yellow in colour and if you check the P.Mauriat site they use gold brass on my 66r model and as you have seen it's a darker nicer colour when stripped and they use yellow brass on there 76 model so it must have something to do with it.Both body's stripped here .

 

[Jules]

I'm beginning to find this all slightly disturbing- Geordie on the loose in a frenzy of nitromorse! 8|

 

[daveysaxboy]

Ya should hear what the wife has had to say about my mad week of stripping but i have retired from all that now and am cured of the nitromor's monster.Rest in peace.+ 🙁

 

[Jules]

david keighley wrote:
Ya should hear what the wife has had to say about my mad week of stripping

Can't resist an "Ooo Err Missus" at this point!

 

[jools]

To add to that - 'no, shuttup. you mustn't' I did my stripping in the bath 'no, stoppit missus' and I have to warn you not to. .. makes a terrible mess of your U-bend... 'oh look, shutyerfaces'



(no seriously.. I stripped my saxes in the bath, well washed them down in it. It was a lovely cream coloured ... PLASTIC ... fibreglass type. >: now it's sort of pebble-dashed in a kind of way, for added sensitivity. 'no, shuttup. I warned you,, ooooh, you mustn't' )

 

[stephen_howard]

There's no telling how a sax body will react once the finish has been removed - many factors affect what happens next, from the acidity of the player's skin to the atmospheric conditions where the horn is used or stored.
Some people end up with a sax that gradually goes a rich, deep yellow...others end up with a green blob.
You can aid the patination process by applying a coat of spray furniture polish to the body soon after the lacquer has been stripped. This helps protect the brass from moisture and air polution ( at least the bits that don't get handled quite so much ). The brass will oxidise slowly beneath the polish and you stand a better chance of ending up with a classic 'vintage' finish.

Regards,

 

[jools]

That's interesting.. I did in fact polish the bell of the tenor with wax polish to do just that: make it waterproof, but it doesn't seem to have worked. However, I am aware that the colour of the bell is a much warmer and slightly darker colour than the body (which I didn't polish). The Yamaha got no polish and has no stains.

I am starting to wonder about the toxic chemical make up of ME. Maybe I am just too caustic/ acid/ salty/ corrosive. I shall keep an eye on that and see if the 'finger touch' areas develop differently.

The other hazard about the wax polish is that it made it very slithery to touch for a while after I'd buffed it up at first.

The good thing about all this, is that -if after a few more months, I don't like the look, I can take it apart and Duraglit the thing back to shiny and start again. Won't take more than an evening.

 

[stephen_howard]

The wax is really only any good for those areas that don't get handled...i.e. inbetween the keywork etc. but ad you've seen, even a residual amount can help to darken the brass.
The difference in the way different horns react will be down to the particular alloy used...some brass has a little more or less copper or zinc in it than others.

It certainly wouldn't hurt to treat selected areas with Duraglit when they appear to be going rather more green than golden.

I can understand how galling it can be - I had a client in this week with an old YTS61 tenor that had lost most of its lacquer but aged beautifully ( apart from the keywork, which was rather manky! ).

Regards,

 

[Bobby G]

I saw someone once with a couple of MkVI horns, an alto and a tenor, neither of which had actually been stripped but which can't have had more than about 5% lacquer left between 'em. The bare bits had gone a kind of greeny-grey. They both sounded good, but looked like absolute }censored{.

 

[onecat]

de-lacquering sometimes helps the sound a tiny bit, and it does not harm the horn if it done right. Without disassembling, you can delacquer the bell and some of the body, if you want, with some paint stripper and tooth brush. make sure to get plenty ventilation (dont inhale the stuff) and dont drip any on the pads. it can look cool, too.

 

[stephen_howard]

In what way, exactly, does removing the lacquer help with the sound?
I mean, I see people chucking this statement around with gay abandon - but where's the science?

Removing the lacquer from a horn does two things. First, it lightens the horn ever so slightly - by as much as the coat of lacquer. I've no idea what a coat of lacquer weighs but I'm betting it's just a few grammes. Secondly, it exposes the brass to the atmosphere - and there can be no doubt that this will harm the horn ( OK, granted, it won't mean the horn will fall apart two weeks later - but there is absolutely no doubt that lacquered brass will last longer than unlacquered brass ).

Now, if removing a few grammes of lacquer could make a difference to the way a horn sounds, then adding a few ounces to the body should have a larger detrimental effect. So - grab a slab of blu-tak and whack it on the body. Will there be any change in the tone? No.
People cite 'resonance' as the reason delacquering improves the tone - but in order for a body to resonate properly it must do so in free space....with nothing to dampen it.
When you pick up a sax you have eight finger and two thumbs in contact with the body, plus two lips. You might also have a sling attached. Whack that lot on a ringing bell and see what happens.

If the tone of a horn can be so easily affected by the mass in contact with the body, baritone saxes would never sound any good - not would any player who worked in a seated position ( typical with the horn down the right side of the body ).

And yet people swear blind that their horns play better after the lacquer's been stripped.
Well, I've seen a fair few of these as you can imagine - and it always amuses me when I ask the players what exactly was involved with the delacquering process. It always involves taking the horn apart, and often involves giving the thing a service.
If you take a horn apart and reassemble it, even without doing any remedial work, there's a good chance that the player will swear it sounds better. There's no reason why it should other than perhaps the action feels a little better due to the redistribution of lubrication...and if you have a service done at the same time...well...

As for why one horn with lacquer doesn't seem to play as well as an identical horn without - it's because they're not the same horns...no two horns will ever be truly identical.

Experiment with these statements...slap that blu-tak on, and maybe keep it on for a couple of weeks..then remove it..see if it makes a difference. Have a pal put their hands around the bell while you're playing...see if that changes anything.

Regards,

 

[thomsax]

On a workshop I let a player (pro) play on five differnt tenors behind a frame and let the participators listen if the could decide which sax was silverplated, lacquered, studentsax, brand..... . The player played with the same mpc and lig on all saxes and the same licks. No one were right about the saxes!!!! The saxes were:
1. Yamaha 62 YTS goldlacquer
2. Yamaha 62 YTS S silverplated
3. Selmer Mk VI (ca -72,less than 40% of the lacquer remaining).
4. Yamaha student tenor.
5. Jupiter 700 black lacquer

The main purpose of a surface coating on a sax is to protect the brass. But on the other side a nice "bake-on lacquer" can hide poor brass, solderings ....... .

I think the tone of a saxohone depends on:
The brass (proportion between copper and zinc, accuracy when melting and blending, rolling.....)
Thickness of the sax-walls, from the neck to the bell.
Toneholes
Resonators

Thomas

 

[jools]

..interesting experiment. The same kind of blind test was done when the plastic Graftons came out with the same result: no-one had a clue which was which.

Stephen, that's a great point of view you put forward there, and I have to say that I've started to agree with the idea that to strip a sax, you have to dismantle it, and if that means in the process that everything gets cleaned, tightened, mended, replaced and lubricated - hey presto... tighter sound. I am no longer convinced by the idea that bare brass 'inherently' sounds 'different'. From all the posts on this site and the submitted scientific studies that have been linked to those comments - nowhere is there a shred of 'actual' proof that the sound is any different.

As for "lacquered brass will last longer than unlacquered brass" - I'm prepared to take my chances, as I confess that my decision to do this was based entirely on cosmetic appearances. If you had seen the look of the tenor beforehand, you would have agreed that it looked 'disgusting' Not only was the original paint job a nasty colour, after thirty years of abuse there was little of it left. It was a very hurt looking horn. The same was true of the Yamaha alto- it had been mishandled by enough schoolchildren to give it a 'scrapyard' appearance. SO, for now, they have a new lease of life... cleaned, mended and polished. I'll be happy if they go green, brown or purple! it's of no consequence. And if the brass rots, I'll hang it on my wall and buy a new one.

 

[stephen_howard]

With regard to the longevity of unlacquered brass - with due care and attention ( i.e. treating verdigris if and when it appears ) it won't be a problem in most people's lifetime...but that isn't to say that the brass isn't harmed. That's the science, the facts of the matter - I think it's important to be as accurate as possible otherwise we end up with loads of hearsay which gets accepted as facts - which often ends up being sold as a feature ( thus we have brand new unlacquered horns being sold on the basis of having a better tone due to not having any lacquer ).

Regards,

 

[daveysaxboy]

Well said,like i said on my thread that i stripped my horn's for my taste in the look's of them,i hate shiney horn's and i am sure my horn's brass will last well after i am dead,i read alot about rotten brass,i,ve seen ,owned and played many old horn's and some were bare,half bare and lacuered etc and a good sax has never fell apart or been full of hole's in my hand's!if you know what i mean.If you want a gleaming sax have it ,or if you want the scruffy bare one have it,yes the lacuer protect's in alot of way's but BARE BRASS 200 YEAR OLD DOOR KNOCKER'S IN ALL WEATHER dont do to badly now,that's my point,and most player's i have met will keep on changing sax's for the rest of there life.The brass will out live us. >.<

 

[stephen_howard]

I quite agree....but the point was suggested that removing the lacquer does no harm. It does - it exposes the brass to the elements and that's always bad for brass.
I know it seems trivial, but if you let it pass you end up with stuff like 'removing the lacquer improves the tone' and 'silver sounds better than brass'.

As it happens, there is one risk that might rear its head sooner rather than later and that's selective galvinic corrosion. A wet player may well have problems with pillars and fitting detaching due to moisture contacting soft soldered joints. This could take a couple of decades...but for many players that's just about the time when a horn's 'really nicely blown in'.
I've seen a few old Selmers that have suffered with this - and it's no big deal ( it's easy enough to repair ) unless a pillar drops off during a gig!

All the same, I can't think of any drastic reason not to strip the lacquer if you want to.

Regards,

 

[daveysaxboy]

Well said once again,keep up the great work you do on your site which can help us sax player's on what's what & what to buy & why.A man of great wisdom to us all.Regard's david. 🙂