Chinese Beastie

I have a Russian match air pistol that is designed and built like a truck, finished like a rusty bicycle, but accurate in all the right places. It’s a tinkerer’s delight and a spendthrift’s dream. You pay pennies on the dollar for a basically well-made machine without paying for the frills which you can add yourself anyway. I’ve done my best to prove the same is true for a Chinese-made curved soprano saxophone that I recently overhauled. For the average musician this sax is a piece of junk and the web forums are full of such reviews, but for someone like me I think they’re the bargain of the century.

THE BAD NEWS.

Fit and finish were lousy. The pads were soft and felt like vinyl despite being made from the hide of some animal. The tone holes were jagged, uneven and out of round. Some keywork solder needed reinforcing. Corks and felts were poorly installed and I generally dislike organic materials on woodwinds anyway. Who knows what the springs are made of. The brass was a pale yellow (not too different than Yamaha saxes, though).

THE GOOD NEWS.

The instrument actually played out-of-the-box and with spot-on intonation! The action, though poorly regulated is a copy of Yanagisawa’s which I love! The screws appear to be stainless steel and are modified parallel screws (I think most techs don’t like them, but I prefer them because, once the key tubes are properly swedged, they hold their adjustment better over time). The best news of all is that this little beastie of a saxophone only cost $150, about a twentieth of the price of the saxophone it is a copy of. Like all new saxes, whatever the brand, it was shiny and pretty. See picture above.

Here's a close-up showing the stamp on the bell betraying this sax's Chinese heritage in classic fashion.

Here it is in pieces still shiny and new. Notice the bell came apart from the body tube; it was not soldered on like some saxes. I replaced the goop they used to seal the joint with a nice, clear silicone sealant.

WHAT MATTERS.

Like the Russian pistol, everything that matters is there and the rest simply doesn’t matter. The sax is well designed as evidenced by the perfect intonation and good keywork design. The pads don’t matter since I replaced them. The tone holes don’t matter since I refinishing them. The keywork solder didn’t matter because I’m a soldering wiz. I hate corks and felts anyway so they didn’t matter. The material doesn’t matter too much since I believe it affects the sound only a little (many would disagree, but they’ve made decent sounding saxes out of plastic and my experience differs). The color/finish doesn’t matter either since I refinished the sax. Springs are easy to make/replace so I didn’t care about those either. Basically, the only thing that matters is a properly formed body with properly placed/sized tone holes and a decent action. I have all that.

Here are some of the tone holes after I refinished them.

At work on my bench. Notice I removed all the springs. I hate getting pricked, but I hate removing/installing springs nearly as much.

WHAT I DID.

In a nutshell: disassembled, removed pads and springs, stripped lacquer, applied patina, sealed finish, replaced corks/felts/pads, assembled, and regulated action. A couple of these steps bear expanding upon. I wanted an antique patina finish. The easiest thing to do would have been to leave the brass bare and let time do its thing, but I managed a nice patina through the magic of chemistry (ferric nitrate/chloride) and paste wax made a nice finish. Where possible I replace corks/felts with teflon sheet, micro suede and other inorganic materials that won’t dry, harden and flake off over time. Oh, and using shellac for gluing pads is for the birds (or insects, shellac being made of insect secretions!) It’s a pet peeve of mine that repair people continue to use inferior albeit traditional materials when better ones are available.

By the way, if anyone ahs a sure-fire way to remove epoxy laquer I'd love to hear it. Stripping the sax was the hardest step of all and I still didn't get all of the clear finish off. I soaked it several days in methylene chloride paint stripper. I think a stronger solution of the stuff would have worked fine.

This is is the body of the sax after applying the patina. I used one chemical to tarnish the brass and another to deposit a little bit of a redish-brown color (most visible at the top of the body tube). There are all sorts of colors that can be applied. I'd like to experiment some more and come up with some truly unique sax finishes.

And finally, I made a set of abalone "pearls" for the keys. I like the way the blue-green looks against the antique brass.