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As you may recollect, I was having some issues with my octave key on the tenor - the neck key has a habit of lifting very slightly when octave key is pressed and G and below are fingered. This causes a slight leak and D in particular sounds terrible with a lot of harmonic.
Interesting discovery: I was at a friend's dinner party last night - we were all musicians. A very good pro flautist and teacher was there. His father was an engineer and he grew up with a lot of tools such as metal working lathes etc at home. Consequently, he's a very proficient tech.
We played all sort of music (I mostly played cello - Haydn trios etc). The tenor sax came out and I explained the issue. After a few minutes close examination, he thinks he knows what the issue is. I will try to post a photo later to demonstrate, but when you depress the octave key, part of the mechanism lowers and it is held up by a cork pad. The cork pad compresses, which causes the neck key to lift slightly. The problem is therefore the compressible nature of the cork - it needs to be replaced by something solid. This explains why having had it fixed 2 months' ago, it is still a problem.
As an interim measure, he placed two small pieces of adhesive label on the sax body, which in effect compensates for the cork compression.
Seems to work
Interesting discovery: I was at a friend's dinner party last night - we were all musicians. A very good pro flautist and teacher was there. His father was an engineer and he grew up with a lot of tools such as metal working lathes etc at home. Consequently, he's a very proficient tech.
We played all sort of music (I mostly played cello - Haydn trios etc). The tenor sax came out and I explained the issue. After a few minutes close examination, he thinks he knows what the issue is. I will try to post a photo later to demonstrate, but when you depress the octave key, part of the mechanism lowers and it is held up by a cork pad. The cork pad compresses, which causes the neck key to lift slightly. The problem is therefore the compressible nature of the cork - it needs to be replaced by something solid. This explains why having had it fixed 2 months' ago, it is still a problem.
As an interim measure, he placed two small pieces of adhesive label on the sax body, which in effect compensates for the cork compression.
Seems to work