Musicare

Musicare Inc., Carlsbad Springs, ON.  All photos:  Zakari Frantz

I really love my instruments.  Each one is a member of my musical family.

The alto I play is a Selmer Super Action 80 Series II.  It was given to me as a gift in 1993, along with a matching soprano of the same year, from my parents. Although the soprano is still original save a couple dead pads, I've had a lot of alterations done on my alto over the past 17 years.  I had an incident on a flight from Portland, Oregon to Boise, Idaho once that left the horn flat on one side.  Although it was a nightmare at the time, some positive things came out of the rebuilding process and the horn seemed to gain some low end after all the stretching and reforming of the bow.  A cork half-cylinder was mounted inside at the top of the bow to speed up airflow (a trick from the 40's & 50's to fix 'warbling' on the low notes).  It's sans lacquer except for on the inside of the bell and has formed an amazing patina since I removed it in 2006.  It also has a set of old-school plastic conical resonators and a new brass thumb hook, installed today by my favourite 'local' saxophone technician, Andrew Abraham at Musicare.

        

Carlsbad Springs is a good 30 minute drive from Kanata, but it's always worth it for me.  They have an ultrasonic cleaning tank, great technicians, and customer service that puts most other music stores to shame.  I broke a spring in a really awkward place over the holidays and went to every instrument store in Twin Falls looking for someone to replace it with no luck.  Andrew did it in 15 minutes while I waited, and even oiled my entire horn for me when he was finished.  While I was waiting he gave me a sneak peek of another customer's Mark VI that had recently been found still in the plastic.  The mint case alone had me drooling!

Another great coincidence was that Andrew was working on my buddy Raymond Murray's new toy, an old Keilwerth tenor he recently found online.  I got some photos of it while it was still disassembled...check out the funky retro key guard!

As I was packing up, I mentioned I was on the search for a brass thumb hook.  Andrew had an extra and drilled it out to fit my horn.  I really feel a difference already in the way it's vibrating, and look forward to experimenting with it more in the coming days.  Students take note:  take the time to search out and make nice with your friendly neighbourhood sax technician...they'll teach you a lot more than you'd expect!

So there you have it, a little sax geekdom to the 12th degree.  See, this blogging thing ain't so hard ;-).