This bad boy came into the shop a couple weeks ago bent, bruised and battered. It belongs to Lorenze Wheatley, whom you met at Whole Foods in an earlier blog. Lorenze is a man about town with irons in many musical fires. I don’t know what happened to his horn, but it looked to me like he had dropped it in its case from a stage…or a maybe a speeding train. It’s a King Tempo baritone sax, and a softy. The best course of action in this case was to pull the thing apart.

Removing the pigtail

First I removed the pigtail. There are no screw bands or glue joints on this instrument, so I had to unsolder the neck and the brace from the body and remove a few posts. I de-dented the body at the main bell brace while straightening the body. Next, the G#, F# and side B-flat tone holes needed to be leveled.

Leveling the G# tone hole

The geometry between the body and the bell was out of alignment so I extended the brace by 1/4″ to allow the bell keys to seat properly.

Adjusting the main bell brace

Next I de-dented the pigtail, resoldered the posts, and realigned the neck socket and the body to the pigtail brace.

De-denting the Pigtail at High E Post

I buffed the areas to prep them for re-assmebly and soldered the brace to the body.

Prepairing to install the pigtail

This whole process took a couple of days, including new pads and other adjustments. Good as almost new. Lorenze picked it up just in time to play at a Aretha Franklin concert in Philadelphia. Another happy customer!