I got a sax off e-bay with a messed up tonehole

That's a bit disturbing, I guess. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping the local tech will sort it out. Unfortunately I got the horn through trading mine and while it is a nice horn it just had very poor response and felt leaky although was described by the seller as playing "very well." It would be a very nice horn if it responded better (about 8 yrs old Yani) but the bent middle B tonehole is not so pretty.

I'm not really sure if I want to contact the seller, because I really like the way the horn plays besides the stuffiness. I left it at the shop and will know more in about a week.

JerryJamz2 said:

Considering the excellent quality of Yani's, I'd venture to say that the upper section of the body tube is bent and as a result is what caused the tonehole to distort in the first place. Not surpising to also find that the side C tonehole is also distorted due to their proximity to each other.

Click to expand...

well actually the bend appears to be near the top of the tonehole and doesn't affect the bottom near the body, which seems to be straight. The pad on that key has a metal resonator unlike the other pads which have plastic. Also there are some burn marks around the area from repair - this happened before and someone already tried to fix it. It looks like it can be bent back out, I don't know why this wasn't done before? A pad isn't going to seal very well over a non-circular tonehole is it? The damaged section is about 3-4mm long, maybe.. My fear is that the horn may never play well until it is bent back out and repaired fully...

I still don't know what's going on with it but I am going to call the tech today and talk to him.