Broken Heart

[AJL]

Made a recent trip to Russelville Arkansas to overhaul my two Kohlert tenors. Upon disassembly of my JK tenor I found a real mess. 2 of the long rods were missing threads and several posts were out of alignment.

So my JK Kohlert & Son's tenor now lay in pieces. Perhaps I will find the will to fabricate new rods and struggle with the misalignment issues sometime in the future. Yes I did overhaul my Kohlert Winnenden tenor which I now love very much .. but I sure miss my dark lush JK tenor.

Time will tell I guess..

[morgan]

my JK Kohlert & Son's tenor now lay in pieces


I've never heard of a JK Kohlert. Perhaps you mean your JK is in pieces.

Is this a trick question? I see three obvious choices at this time:

1. Fix it
2. Put it back together in its original flawed condition
3. Take it to a repair shop.

[AJL]

my JK Kohlert & Son's tenor now lay in pieces


I've never heard of a JK Kohlert. Perhaps you mean your JK is in pieces.


No I did not error. Yes there were JK stencils under the Kohlert name complete with the JK trademark.


Is this a trick question? I see three obvious choices at this time:

1. Fix it
2. Put it back together in its original flawed condition
3. Take it to a repair shop.

Not a trick question. At the time of disassembly I was apprenticing under Paul Heimann. lt's easy to say just fix it or put it back together but that all takes money and I had just finished a trip costing close to $2000.00 dollars. There was no possible way it could return to it's orginal state without a lot of glue and bubblegum. My desire was a flawless overhaul that was why it went to Heimann's Horn in the first place along with my other Kohlert. The tenor is currently under the long reconstruction process. It will play again... As to when.. that's another story.

Thanks for your inquiry.

[morgan]

So JK made some Kohlerts! Interesting. And yet the rest of the time Kohlert was a real manufacturer, not a stenciller, right? New secrets of saxophones, it seems, lurk under every rock.


Conjecture: In the process of learning how to do repair, among the first several hundred saxes you overhaul, 90% of them will offer some nasty new problem you've never seen before. I think the object of the game is to enjoy the new puzzle (and the tools you have to buy to deal with it) "Oh! This saxophone wants to teach me about warped toneholes! " I will exclaim cheerfully. or "wrecked pivot holes" . or "neck problems". ... Your JK wants to teach you about threader dies...

[AJL]

So JK made some Kohlerts! Interesting. And yet the rest of the time Kohlert was a real manufacturer, not a stenciller, right? New secrets of saxophones, it seems, lurk under every rock.


Conjecture: In the process of learning how to do repair, among the first several hundred saxes you overhaul, 90% of them will offer some nasty new problem you've never seen before. I think the object of the game is to enjoy the new puzzle (and the tools you have to buy to deal with it) "Oh! This saxophone wants to teach me about warped toneholes! " I will exclaim cheerfully. or "wrecked pivot holes" . or "neck problems". ... Your JK wants to teach you about threader dies...

Yes the secrets do seem to constantly reveal themselves. Just when you believe you have some understanding of who made what, a horn comes along that you didn't know about. I believe Kohlert did stencil for other companies. Saxpics mentioned this on his site. The difficulty I've found is trying to determine say a Kohlert stencil from say a Dorfler. Both have RTH's and very similar keywork and guards.

On the Conjecture: Puzzles are part of my daily life. I build ground up street and race cars for a living with 2 turbo motors on my bench currently and 2 in the wings, along with one Toyota TRD 2000GT Widebody conversion and one quarter mile car. I think I've learned all I can from taps and dies when I was 14. Life is without a doubt one learning experience after another but sometimes it's necessary to prioritize.

Regards,

[Gordon (NZ)]

I think that what one would learn about thread sizes from vehicles would be rather small compared with the huge spectrum of threads, many of them non-standard, that instrument makers present.

To illustrate, I keep adding to my range of dies to cover the threads I meet as a repair technician. So far I have 66 thread sizes, all 6 mm or under, and all used on wind instruments. I still have to somtimes improvise for sizes that I have been unable to obtain.

Regarding JK Kohlert. I learnt on a Kohlert flute, and have serviced several Kohlert instruments. The standard of manufacture was sufficiently poor that I would not be surprised to find non-gripping threads on rods, ex-factory. I know not whether this applies to "JK Kohlert", but JK certainly has a recent practice of marketing cheaper, low quality instruments, made in the likes of Czechoslovakia and Taiwan (e.g. ST90 models), under their name.

[hornfixer]

If I remember correctly, id does say made in Czechoslovakia.

[jasendorf]

Regarding JK Kohlert. I learnt on a Kohlert flute, and have serviced several Kohlert instruments. The standard of manufacture was sufficiently poor that I would not be surprised to find non-gripping threads on rods, ex-factory. I know not whether this applies to "JK Kohlert", but JK certainly has a recent practice of marketing cheaper, low quality instruments, made in the likes of Czechoslovakia and Taiwan (e.g. ST90 models), under their name.

It sounds to me as if you're referring to the NEW Kohlert stuff coming out of Vietnam. Not the old, original Kohlert stuff which came out of Czechoslovakia early to mid twentieth century.

[LoLa]

depending on the vintage, Kohlerts could have originated in Asia, Czechoslovakia, Germany, even the Sudetenland

comparing vintage to modern Kohlerts is an apples to oranges comparison