[ThreeSixTwoFive]

Greets all:

Hope someone will have a comment on this.

I am restoring a funky Indiana alto for myself. While flattening a tone hole with a file, I accidentally went further than I wanted and now I have a tone hole with a wider "rim". (It is flat however.)

Am I going to have trouble getting the pad to cover and seal properly?

Thanks for any help offered!

 

[clarnibass]

You can get a good seal on a wide(r) rim. Since a perfectly flat pad is never actually 100% perfectly flat, the wider the rim the more force is needed to seal. Think of one nail vs. a bed of nails, you need much more force against the bed of nails for them to "seal" (i.e. hurt your butt if you sit on them) in comparison with one nail (which is the thinner rim). So it's a much bigger "resolution" but same idea. On some Martins I have thinned the rim for longer reliablity of the seal with light touch (with no compromises in playability/response/intoantion).

 

[simso]

Yeh its all good mate

 

[slausonm]

Greets all:...

Am I going to have trouble getting the pad to cover and seal properly?

Thanks for any help offered!

Probbably a little bit, but you would have more problems if the tone hole was not flat. You can carefully reduce the diameter of the top edge of the tone hole, but this would take a great deal of skill for it to come out evenly. If your skill at filing the tone hole flat went too far, it may be a job for another repair tech to consider doing for you.

 

[ThreeSixTwoFive]

Thanks for the help!