[xsnoopyx]

Hey!
First off i want to say great job on this forum, its really awesome and informative! Now to business --
I have two saxes at home, one a cannonball, and another an ebay yas-23. The YAS-23 is pretty messed up.. Theres a lot of dings on it and the pads are deteriorating. badly. Its pretty playable, and its notthat bad of an instrument. The range is messed up i think because of the pads.

So i wanted to replace the pads on my YAS-23. I recently bought some SaxGourmet. They havent come in yet because theyre on backorder.

http://musicmedic.com/catalog/products/pad-s40-20.html

So basically my questions were.

1. Should I replace the pads?
a. Is it possible for me to do it? (Im pretty good with my sax cause i do some minor repairs on it)
2. Are these pads very good quality/ produce good sound? (Im going to be in 11 th grade/ junior in high school)
a. i wont encounter any problems while using them will i?
3. ive read lots of instructions on installing pads, so can anyone reiterate the basic procedure of pad replacement?

THANKS!!!

 

[Mope]

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -Mark Twain

 

[xsnoopyx]

Alright. okay, so question one is down. i guess we'll count that for 1a also. ahhaha.

can anyone help me with 2, 2a ,and 3?

 

[Carl H.]

2, they are of very good quality.

2a, they demand flat toneholes and flat key cups, and are difficult if both conditions are not met.

3. Stick it in with sticky stuff

 

[xsnoopyx]

2a, by flat key cups do you mean that they i didnt like throw my sax at the ground and bent it? etc etc?

3 hot glue? cheap and efficient

thanks!!

 

[Bernards20040]

2a, by flat key cups do you mean that they i didnt like throw my sax at the ground and bent it? etc etc?

3 hot glue? cheap and efficient

thanks!!

3 Shellac = Better / easier

 

[Jonathan C.]

You going to need to heat the key.

 

[xsnoopyx]

shellac is cheap ? or really expensive?

heat the key with like one of those bunsen burners on musicmedic? couldnt i just scrape? or a hair dryer?

 

[vito]

Read this several times before you start:
http://www.ferreestools.com/Sax%20pads.htm

Shellac is not expensive
http://www.musicmedic.com/catalog/products/adhe-s100.html

Heat - http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=35776

 

[TenTenTooter]

You'd need a gas torch like they sell on MusicMedic, a hair drier won't cut it.

If this is your main saxophone I would not suggest repadding the horn yourself, there are a lot of holes that you could fall into and you will loose a lot of playing time. If this is, however, your backup saxophone, go for it!

 

[Gordon (NZ)]

1. Yes if they have deteriorated or hardened beyond being able to be adjusted to perform their sealing function.

1a. Yes, but be aware that the traps for the novice probably equate to those in overhauling your own car engine, or a gear box. Technicians work for years on saxes before they begin to think they really know what they are doing. That is because they tend to be AWARE of how much they don't know. You will probably save a lot of money and time if you find out how much you don't know. Money spent on the following would be money saved: THE COMPLETE WOODWIND REPAIR MANUAL - by Reg Thorpe, available from http://www.napbirt.org/

2. "Are these pads very good quality/ produce good sound? (Im going to be in 11 th grade/ junior in high school)" Yes, as has already been said. The better the pads, the more skill is needed to get them sealing.

a. "i wont encounter any problems while using them will i?"

There is hardly any job done on a woodwind that does have a myriad of problems lurking around it. Without experience, you may create problems as fast or faster than you solve them. Buy the book!

3. "Ive read lots of instructions on installing pads, so can anyone reiterate the basic procedure of pad replacement?"

The basic method is to glue them in with a temperature sensitive glue. There are many variations on this theme. YOu say you are already aware of at least a few. Each has its own advantages and difficulties. You choose! To disuss all the variations fully would take a lot of writing.

Variations have been written many times in this forum. Do a search, or Buy the book.

For every method of successful pad installation and adjustment,the devil is in the detail. If instructions are not quite a few pages long, then be aware that they really are superficial. As an indication of the detail, the following is nothing more than a SUGGESTED ORDER of adjusting a sax, based on a quite specific method of installation, without even going into the how of the adjustment.
Post 4 at http://www.saxontheweb.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=507033#post507033

Putting pads in is a very small part of getting a re padded sax working. It's a big job.

Use shellac sticks for adhesive. It's the easiest for a novice to use.

 

[xsnoopyx]

Well i use this horn most, but it's not like im using it anytime soon so, i have a lot of time... Its not like I do it, and it breaks right?
1. How many sticks of Shellac would i need?
2. The book you recommended seems great Gordon but its kinda pricey. Is there a repair book as good as this but for altos/saxes only? Maybe from the same company?

Just to go over a basic outline of repadding
its basically:
- Look over instrument, take out pads w/ heat gun
- replace pads + glue with shellac/heatgun
- make adjustments to correctly seal the hole using Gordon's guide

Did I miss anything?

Thankss!!!!

 

[Mope]

1.

Putting pads in is a very small part of getting a re padded sax working. It's a big job.

GordonNZ is a great tech with many years experience. Most players would not attempt a complete repad. Understand that you very well could end up with a real mess that will be very costly to fix. There are a lot of details. That's what you seem to be missing. Good luck.

 

[Carl H.]

Did I miss anything?

Whoa!!!:shock:

Just tackling a complicated job for the first time, unassisted, with difficult to work with materials. On your main horn, no less. And can't afford the proper reference materials!

Pay to have it done this time. Collect the tools and resources necessary to do the job in an informed manner. Do it on a secondary horn, not your main horn!

 

[TenTenTooter]

Did I miss anything?

Thankss!!!!

You missed cleaning the sax, leveling the toneholes, leveling the key cups, checking the keys and rods for bends/binds, and a lot of other small things that can and will catch you unprepared. Judging by what you've said so far you don't really have an idea of what you are getting yourself into and will have just wasted $70 on a padset of very high quality pads that need a ligh level of skill to be installed. I'd take it to a tech this time and find another horn to mess around with, maybe some school horns that aren't being used, anything to break the ice on horn repair slowly instead of just jumping right into the middle of a storm.

Just my two cents, and if you deside to go ahead and give it a try and fix the horn yourself, may the force be with you!

-Scott

 

[xsnoopyx]

yaeh, plus i need to get the shellac :|

does anyone know a reasonable price for a job like this? the tech is a real rip off where i live. i mean he was gonna charge me 20$ to replace one octave key pad. i ended up buying the octave pad from another musician dealer and gluing it myself

so reasonable price for this?

tahsnk

 

[potiphar]

People have posted elsewhere on adapting a dual-element soldering iron to heat stuck keys. Would this method generate enough heat for seating pads, or is the commercial heat-gun or burner essential?

 

[hansmartini]

Some techs have a minimum that they charge. Sometimes you get lucky and they will replace that octave pad for free or next to nothing. Charging $20 for a small repair is probably not unusual and doesn't neccessarily mean a full repad will cost an astronomical sum of money.
Hans

 

[Gordon (NZ)]

People have posted elsewhere on adapting a dual-element soldering iron to heat stuck keys. Would this method generate enough heat for seating pads, or is the commercial heat-gun or burner essential?

"dual-element soldering iron"?????

Do you mean a standard soldering gun with the tip of the exposed bent-wire element cut off, leaving two electrodes? If so:
1. I think it would be very slow on keys the size of larger sax pads. Fine for clarinet, oboe and piccolo.
2. The tips need to make a good electrical connection with the key, so lacquer or heavy corrosion would stop it working.
3. Depending on the brand, especially if it is cheap, the voltage may be high enough to leave arcing pits on the surface.

Why not buy a cheap butane burner, eg something similar to http://www.musicmedic.com/catalog/products/tool-st100t.html

 

[Gordon (NZ)]

yaeh, plus i need to get the shellac :|

does anyone know a reasonable price for a job like this? the tech is a real rip off where i live. i mean he was gonna charge me 20$ to replace one octave key pad. i ended up buying the octave pad from another musician dealer and gluing it myself

so reasonable price for this?

tahsnk

A neck octave pad is probably the easiest pad on a sax to replace. It doesn't take much time at all.

However, I wonder how much of the technician's time the average guy needing an octave pad actually takes up? Talking? Explaining? .... $20? And what is the REAL cost of having any pad that a player requires on hand. Inventory to turnover ratio is, for most technicians, pretty high, far higher than an accountant would like. And the time involved in maintaining that inventory is large. And any year soon, the entire traditional-type pad stock is likely to head for obsolescence, and be chucked out. If that pad were a car part, where charges for carrying stock are more realistic, then the charge for that pad alone would probably be at least $10.

I suggest you could consider yourself lucky that so many technicians are prepared to do so much for so little.