Saxophones Re-pad for £155

[ProfJames]

Sent my Martin Imperial to [h=4]geoff.y@virgin.net | Mob: - 07903 734659[/h]He is a member of NAMIR - Nat Assoc of Musical Instrument Repairers, based in Shrewsbury. He has great pedigree and references.

Dawkes wanted £400 which I just could not justify. A great shop and staff with technicians of the highest calibre but that price is way above my budget.

Please use ProfJames as a reference when contacting Geoff - a top guy.

 

[milandro]

the ever increasing price of re-pads is the single most important factor that is killing the sales and circulation of the lesser valuable (market wise) vintage saxophones.

True that taxes, high overhead costs are a major burden on many self-employed but on a market where one can find a new Chinese instrument being sold (at a profit!) for 250€ it is very difficult to spend 600€ to have a less than very valuable vintage horn.

Technicians who do a good job for a sensible amount of money should be praised as you did

 

[Colin the Bear]

This work has been done? Or is it an estimate over the phone for an unseen instrument?

 

[ProfJames]

Estimate over the phone/internet. He has seen photos of the sax and knows the Martin line of instruments.

 

[kevgermany]

Let's assume it's a day' work to do a reasonable job. Now factor in a decent set of pads at somewhere between 50 and a hundred or so... How can he make a living on that sort of pricing? Even using really cheap pads, there's not a lot to cover overheads, let alone a reasonable income.

 

[Bigtwin]

Let's assume it's a day' work to do a reasonable job.

It isn't. No where near if you know what you're doing.

 

[Fraser Jarvis]

Let's assume it's a day' work to do a reasonable job. Now factor in a decent set of pads at somewhere between 50 and a hundred or so... How can he make a living on that sort of pricing? Even using really cheap pads, there's not a lot to cover overheads, let alone a reasonable income.

Do we all sence a MartinMods fiasko all over again?.........far to cheap..

 

[milandro]

I use a technician, Tim Brennan, in Haarlem-the Netherlands who does a repad (alto or tenor) for 250€ , he works at home, low overhead costs , and uses Rigotti pads (a choice of metal or plastic boosters), I have had dozens of repads done by him, he offers a guarantee of one year on his repads and performs art least one “ once over” within one year.

In Belgium, I hear from people in he business, there are several technicians who work for similar fees but , unlike Tim, also perform partial repairs (he doesn’t like doing that and prefers total repads).

He gives you an official receipt and pays VAT. If that is too little it might be but he has been in business for at least 20 years, before he was employed at Matthews in Edam. have good reasons to assume that Tim Brennan KNOWS what he is doing.

Shops charge anything between 400€ ( same Rigotti pads) to 600€ ( Pisoni pads) of course their overhead is larger.

 

[jonf]

Let us all know as soon as you get it back if the work is good - if it is, at that price he'll be getting a job from me pretty soon.

 

[Melissa]

Absolutely, And some from me too! I bought a set of pads for my Boosey Tenor from music spa Italy and that was some £80+, Pisoni's with domed metal reso's.

 

[Colin the Bear]

And then he'll get popular real quick and put up his prices.

I do my own work. It must be a close call for some people with the cost of a refit being more than a new chinese instrument.

 

[rhysonsax]

Do we all sence a MartinMods fiasko all over again?.........far to cheap..

There's a huge difference between doing a repad and doing custom keywork modifications. The first is a standard job that should take a predictable amount of time. The latter, or at least what MartinMods was doing, was designing and fabricating things that no one had done before, so very difficult to forecast the time required.

I have just had a full repad done on my Mk7 alto for £260, which I think is a decent price. It seems like a very good job as well and included some work on the mechanism and set-up as well as Pisoni pads with metal resonators.

Rhys

 

[Melissa]

And then he'll get popular real quick and put up his prices.

I do my own work. It must be a close call for some people with the cost of a refit being more than a new chinese instrument.

I could not agree more, I was wishing to make a business of playable vintage horns, at the present market it all seems pointless to me unless you go high end.

 

[ProfJames]

Will respond as soon as it comes back. Will get my tutor and Dawkes to give an opinion on the re-pad. If it is no good then I shall advise. Let's see what happens........

 

[old git]

Wonder if the repad includes re-regulation if necessary?

Apologies for being serious but also recall Griff telling me about his tool costs, the majority would not be needed for just a repad. We might see a difference between repairers/regulators and re-padders.

 

[jrintaha]

Perhaps he uses those no-name Chinese pads that go for £20 a set. I actually did my alto repad with those, and so far so good. The metal resonators looked exactly the same as those on Musicmedic.com Precision Pads (made in USA), the key difference being that the resonators on the MusicMedic.com set were sometimes a bit off center, whereas on the no-name Chinese pads they were on spot. There were a couple of pads where the stud that holds the resonator on the pad looked like it might come off at some point, but for that price you could buy 5 sets of the Chinese pads and discard the 10 pads that don't look good.

The Chinese pads with plastic resonators did not look half as nice - the plastic wasn't moulded very well, and there were uneven and sharp spots here and there. As for the leather itself - I could not really tell much difference, and I have worked a bit with leather doing concertina bellows repairs.

 

[milandro]

The prices and repads I talked about are NOT made by using inferior Chinese pads but using Rigotti French made Pads

Rigotti is a French maker, they sell, next to their famous reeds, pads too.

they are good an not too expensive products, several people use them in the Netherlands, among them Tim Brennan http://www.timbrennan.nl/us/ ( whom I have spoken about before ^) and Harry Bakker (a rather famous shop) http://www.harrybakker.nl/teksten-service/instrumenten-reparatie

http://www.rigotti-reeds.com/c_tampons_reparateurs.htm

they also have other supplies for technicians, all affordable.

http://www.rigotti-reeds.com/catalog_products_reeds.htm

 

[ProfJames]

Here is the email regarding which pads my techie uses and where he sources -

"The pads I use are from either Windplus or Windcraft and are the premium leather grade. I don’t know where they get them from, but, I do not order directly from the East or E-bay I only use these two suppliers for pads etc."


​

 

[Fraser Jarvis]

There's a huge difference between doing a repad and doing custom keywork modifications. The first is a standard job that should take a predictable amount of time. The latter, or at least what MartinMods was doing, was designing and fabricating things that no one had done before, so very difficult to forecast the time required.

I have just had a full repad done on my Mk7 alto for £260, which I think is a decent price. It seems like a very good job as well and included some work on the mechanism and set-up as well as Pisoni pads with metal resonators.

Rhys

The point i was trying to make Rhys was that Martin mods guy dug himself an ever increasing pit by not charging enough for the work he carried out, to the point of not being able to pay suppliers, return instruments and God knows what else....irispective of weather he'd doing a service, repad or custom mods, same thing applies here, i mean if a decent set of pads cost about £80 he ain't making a whole lot more is he? The £260 you were charged seems a lot more realistic.

 

[rhysonsax]

The point i was trying to make Rhys was that Martin mods guy dug himself an ever increasing pit by not charging enough for the work he carried out, to the point of not being able to pay suppliers, return instruments and God knows what else....irispective of weather he'd doing a service, repad or custom mods, same thing applies here, i mean if a decent set of pads cost about £80 he ain't making a whole lot more is he? The £260 you were charged seems a lot more realistic.

Well yes and no ..... With MartinMods I think there were lots of "issues" to do with personality and inability to communicate honestly and be realistic about what could be achieved and what time it would take.

Say that a repad is a five hour job (I don't know if this is realisitic) and a set of pads costs £70. Then charging the customer £150 means £16 pounds per hour: £250 charge equates to £36 per hour and so on.

A shop with business rates, overheads etc must charge more per hour to keep in business. An individual can charge less and can also be a bit flexible about jobs that take longer than expected etc. But the likely overrun for a repad that goes badly might be just a couple of hours, whereas for custom keywork it could be tens or even hundreds of hours.

Agreed, that if a particular tech has got "personality issues" this could become a problem, but that isn't really down to the pricing policy. A sensible tech would either increase their prices or turn work away if a backlog built up.

Rhys