Tech/maintenance Leaks in top stack and low notes

[PigSquealer]

Old as in old. A 30 year old horn is 30 years old. Leather, felt and cork degrade and become brittle or hard. Oil dries out and rust ensues. Glue stops sticking and bits wobble or fall off. Like many things, looking shiney isn't the criteria.

Stack adjusting screws make a Yam in good condition very easy to live with but for the kind of reliability an inexperienced beginner needs, a full refit is on the cards imo for any make after 3 decades of even just sitting on a shelf.

My 25's haven't had the full treatment so I'm constantly tweaking the regulation, replacing odd bits of cork, and the odd pad.

It's not a problem for a fettler. If a new reed doesn't sort the problem, I know it's not me so it goes on the coffee table for a leak light check and a tweak, but a beginner needs reliability.

I agree. A recent (YAS 23) repad I did was on original 30+ year old pads. Making adjustments just didn’t keep anymore.
Owner furnished a factory OE replacement set. He bought the sax new. Care & upkeep matters.

 

[JSL]

Old as in old. A 30 year old horn is 30 years old. Leather, felt and cork degrade and become brittle or hard. Oil dries out and rust ensues. Glue stops sticking and bits wobble or fall off. Like many things, looking shiney isn't the criteria.

Well, yeah. What you're describing is a 30-year-old horn, with 30-year-old pads, that hasn't been properly maintained. My '65 Mark VI tenor is 51 years old and all the pads are good, the felt and cork is fine, there's no rust, the action is smooth as butter (oil hasn't dried out), and I've never had any 'bits wobbling or falling off'. But of course, it's had an overhaul in the past and a few pad changes and other work over all those years. It's in like-new playing condition because when it needs attention I take it to my tech.

The same is true for my '50 Buescher Aristocrat tenor (76 years old). And it was also true of a '39 Aristocrat that I sold recently.

All 3 of those tenors have been totally reliable and none of them have needed constant tweaking of the regulation & needing odd bits of cork or felt replaced. Of course, they are quality horns.

 

[thomsax]

Old saxophones need regular adjustment.

All saxes needs regular adjustment and maintenance. My 1938 Martin Handcraft tenor -38 is the sax that needs less adjustments. Why? It's a good model with great materials. The guy who did renovation had skills and installed good stuff on the sax. I take good care of my sax, maybe exaggerated love and care. It think that it the secret.

 

[Stephen Howard]

Well, yeah. What you're describing is a 30-year-old horn, with 30-year-old pads, that hasn't been properly maintained. My '65 Mark VI tenor is 51 years old and all the pads are good, the felt and cork is fine, there's no rust, the action is smooth as butter (oil hasn't dried out), and I've never had any 'bits wobbling or falling off'. But of course, it's had an overhaul in the past and a few pad changes and other work over all those years. It's in like-new playing condition because when it needs attention I take it to my tech.

The same is true for my '50 Buescher Aristocrat tenor (76 years old). And it was also true of a '39 Aristocrat that I sold recently.

All 3 of those tenors have been totally reliable and none of them have needed constant tweaking of the regulation & needing odd bits of cork or felt replaced. Of course, they are quality horns.

There are quite a few Yamahas out there that are knocking on 50 years old - and still going strong.
You can make pretty much any horn last (yep, even the cheapies) if you look after it.
Where the Yamahas win out is in the hardness of the brass they use for the key barrels - the wear rate is far below any other brand of horn out there.

 

[thomsax]

Are you using pad irons on pads with plastic resonators?

I agree. A recent (YAS 23) repad I did was on original 30+ year old pads. Making adjustments just didn’t keep anymore.
Owner furnished a factory OE replacement set. He bought the sax new. Care & upkeep matters.
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[dexdex]

Just bought an old (20++ years ?) YAS-32. It hadn’t been played for more than a decade. Most pads are still in an amazing shape.
I noticed a slight lag in the emission pp in the low end, but saw the smart adjustment screws typical of Yamaha. So I took the risk, and bought it. Best case, I can solve it. Worst case, visit to Paul, our local horn tech.
Back home, screw-driver, 2 tries, and bingo. The horn sings like new. The leak was on the left hand, one of the top pads that can really ruin the whole horn.
Played my monthly senior residence gig on it, this thingy plays like a breeze.
Does the 25 have those screws ?

 

[cappers]

Thanks @dexdex
This is the 25 andI think it has those adjusters

 

[turf3]

Leaks are funny; sometimes you can just blow right past a rather large leak in one spot, but a much smaller leak somewhere else is a complete show stopper.

Two stories:

I have a nice Conn 10M tenor, that always played very well except that the lowest notes (B, Bb) were intermittently either very hard to get response, or very easy. I looked at it, a couple techs looked at it, nothing - till one day I ran the leak light down it ONE MORE TIME and I found a small leak somewhere in the right hand stack. Then I fingered the notes again, no leak. Fingered them again, leak. Well, I yanked that pad out - almost zero shellac behind it. It was intermittently shifting and sometimes it'd leak and sometimes it wouldn't. I reseated the pad with a generous bed of shellac, and the problem has been cured for 10 years or more now. So just one pass with the leak light may not be enough.

I also have a nice old Martin alto. I put it in the case back in 2020, and then moved cross country, stopped playing alto, have not even thought about it since. Just a couple weeks ago I pulled it out, tried to play it - nothing below G would play at all. I ran a leak light down it, and yeah, there were some leaks, but it didn't LOOK any worse than a lot of horns I've played without difficulty. I tried the el cheapo pad seat method (wedge everything closed and pass a heat gun over) - nope. So, I scraped off all the adjustment corks, reseated every pad one by one, put new adjustment corks, regulated the stacks - and it's playing very nicely now. (I wish those adjustment screws had been standard practice a hundred years ago. In my opinion designing a horn without them is malpractice.)

 

[JSL]

Yeah, Stephen. All I can say is you guys (expert techs) are lifesavers! Here in the SF Bay Area, I have a great tech (Lee Kramka) who has kept my horns in tip-top condition. A few times when I let my VI go a bit too long, his comment was "I'm surprised you can still play this thing". Then he'd do his magic on it and I basically had a brand-new horn.

So, a big thanks to you and all the other top-notch techs out there.

 

[PigSquealer]

Are you using pad irons on pads with plastic resonators?

Yes and usually cold. If warmed up it’s not beyond discomfort to touching.

 

[PigSquealer]

Does the 25 have those screws ?

Thanks @dexdex
This is the 25 andI think it has those adjusters

Yes they do. The upper stack has two that you both pictured. The lower stack has 3. Sometimes you need to loosen or remove the cloth guard to access them.

 

[Stephen Howard]

Yes and usually cold. If warmed up it’s not beyond discomfort to touching.

Same here.
There are very few occasions where I'd be using a pad iron that's hot enough to mark plastic - and then it's just a matter of being careful about it..
I would tend to say that I view pad irons as 'assistants' rather than fixers. They help the process along when everything else is right. I see an awful lot of horns where an iron has been used to correct a bad setup (pad too thick, typically, or a warped cup/tonehole etc.) and it rarely results in a reliable fix. An overly-hot iron is also the major cause of shrinkage in new pads, resulting in a sort of cone shape to the pad rather than a cylinder.

 

[cappers]

Just got back from visiting Jim Prior. Some here may know him - woodwind tech at Mayalls and Just Flutes in Croydon and formerly at Ackermans in Hove. He lives a couple of miles from me which is handy and works from home.

Left the YAS-25 for a strip down and full service. The upper stack pads are hard and dry, G# is flaking and the bell pads are a bit manky. Otherwise it's in very good shape! It'll probably cost more than the sax itself (I got it for £200) but worth it to get it in tiptop condition again.

I'll update when I get it back in a couple of weeks.

P.S. If @Stephen Howard is reading this.........the horn was playing fine when I put it in it's case last year on getting my tenor. After about a year of resting it is now in the state described. The case is in my study, at ambient room temperature (~17-21°C) and the horn was put away cleaned and dried. Am I doing something wrong storage-wise? I did find a packet of silica-gel in the case, could that have made it too dry?
Thanks.

 

[Colin the Bear]

You probably got it for £200 because the work needed doing. They go £400 to £500 on ebay. A good one more.

It'll sing properly when it's done. It's surprising what can happen in a case.

 

[PigSquealer]

Am I doing something wrong storage-wise? I did find a packet of silica-gel in the case, could that have made it too dry?

No and no.

 

[cappers]

You probably got it for £200 because the work needed doing. They go £400 to £500 on ebay. A good one more.

It'll sing properly when it's done. It's surprising what can happen in a case.

It was advertised as "spares or repairs". Went to take a look (it was local) and it was in excellent condition and was playable-ish so I took a gamble. I was given a money-back guarantee if it was found to be beyond resonable economic repair. The worst pads were replaced and it had a COA and was playing nicely before I put it to bed.

 

[Pete Thomas]

I was given a money-back guarantee if it was found to be beyond resonable economic repair.

That’s a legal argument you wouldn’t want to get into, ie define reasonable.

 

[Targa]

That’s a legal argument you wouldn’t want to get into, ie define reasonable.

Expert witness, the opinion of a man on the Clapham omnibus.

 

[cappers]

That’s a legal argument you wouldn’t want to get into, ie define reasonable.

It was in writing, I still have the receipt. Not that it would be worth chasing it in court, loads of money for solicitors and barristers. Small claims court perhaps?

Anyway I struck lucky.

 

[Pete Thomas]

It was in writing,

What I meant was the word reasonable. It doesn’t matter whether in writing or not just a definition of the word. It’s not going to court but technically if it did, the word would be argued (as it would also out of court)