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50s Cleveland pinky table

724 Views 7 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  JayeLID, 
Brian Labbie
I recently aquired a well worn 50s vintage Cleveland Terminal Tower/Clock tower.
It has a great tone and the action is surprisingly light. The only thing that is a real detractor is the low Bb position on the pinky table. What were they thinking, my 1920s King is way better in that department!

I decided to have a go at modifying the pinky table to make it more friendly.
I think it came out pretty good. I'm no expert tech, so I am sure that many could have done better.
Here's what I came up with.

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It works surprisingly well. I just hacked the pinky table from a junker sax and soldered it to the back of the existing Bb key.

Just thought I'd share.
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JayeLID
Good job, where did the donor part come from ? Also, soft-soldered ?
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JayeLID
turf3 said:
If you match the two parts very carefully (no gaps) and you provide a large mating surface, avoid butt joints, and design the joint for mostly shear or compressive stress rather than peeling strees, soft soldered key mods/repairs can last decades. (I have plenty of evidence for this in my personal instruments). If you rely on a big glob of solder to provide strength, you'll buy yourself a lot of trouble.
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Yes, agreed - given in this instance, how the surfaces orient towards one another...no 'usual' forces applied to that touch will likely make that solder joint fail.

So, yeah...impressive DIY job !!!!

Silver solder always stronger and a good tech would probably have gone that route...but for a DIYer it runs the risk of actually heating the key to a degree where other silver-soldered elements of the key start to fall off...and again, in this case, the typical forces are such that it probably isn't necessary to silver....
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