Musical Notes

Fun fact: the 10M is also referred to as the Ladyface, due to the portrait of a woman engraved on the bell!

Here's something you don't see every day... a metal taragato!

Recently, I had a chance to do an overhaul on a Conn 28M. Conn is such an interesting company to me, particularly in how they designed their saxophones.

Carlo Sbisa shares information about the design and manufacture of the custom made Low C Extension system for the paperclip contrabass clarinet.

Typically, replacing pads is virtually a non-issue. Some older, larger instruments use pad sizes that are no longer in production by any modern instrument repair supplier. Sometimes the only solution is to modify an existing pad to fit your needs. Here is a full description of that process.

For a brief period of time in the 1920's, Conn offered colored enamel finish on their saxophones. While we have seen a few colored enamel altos, by far the most instruments that were released in this finish were C-melody horns. Here we see 3 Conn C-melody saxophones in different colors of enamel. Note that two are the classic Conn straight neck C-melody, while one is the older style curved neck.

Over the past few years that I’ve been working with Matt, his business model has presented a host of situations that would be simultaneously rewarding and infuriating to any tech, but occasionally it grants me the opportunity to see something truly unique.

The Pan American “Violin Finish” Clarinet according to the brochures, flyers and price lists was a light-colored violin finish for wood clarinets. They first popped up in the Spring of 1950 and the last mention of it was in January 18, 1954.

This is an EXTREMELY RARE Keilwerth Toneking 3000 Jazzophone. The jazzophone is a bit of an odd duck-it’s a trumpet but is wrapped like a saxophone. Looks really funky and cool and sounds great, though you can’t use mutes with it. In over 10 years of dealing in vintage instruments I’ve never seen another one of these in person.