Learning to fix what I love
A workshop log · Barcelona
I play alto saxophone — well enough to hear when a horn is fighting me instead of singing, and well enough to care when a vintage instrument sits in a case, unplayable, because nobody wants to take on the repair.
OhMySax is where I'm learning vintage saxophone repair from the ground up — no school, no apprenticeship yet, just hands-on work on horns I've bought and inherited.
Now
Leak on the G# key cluster — the pad on the G# cup isn't seating fully, letting air escape when the key closes. The low A pad also leaks: the resonator is slightly off-center, so the pad doesn't make a clean seal against the tone hole rim. Plan is to replace both pads with Pisoni Pro pads, reseat the resonators with shellac, and check the key heights with a feeler gauge. Good first real pad job — the A-50 keywork is forgiving and the tone holes are level.
A key post on the bell section has come loose from the body. The mating faces are cleaned back to bright brass and dry-fit confirms alignment — no bent rod, nothing sheared beyond the solder joint itself. Next bench session: tin both surfaces and soft-solder with a low-temp silver-bearing alloy to avoid lifting the adjacent lacquer. Once the post holds, the real work starts: full regulation and tuning pass — pad seating on every cup, spring tensions, cork thicknesses, intonation up the horn.
Updated as work progresses. Next horns queue up in the Collection section below.
Inventory
11 alto saxophones spread across five countries. Most of them need work.
Main player. The benchmark everything else gets compared to. Dark, centered tone with even response across all three registers — the low end speaks without effort and the palm keys don't fight back. Key action is light and precise, with minimal lost motion. Paired with a Meyer 5M hard rubber mouthpiece and Vandoren Java 2.5 reeds. This is the horn that makes you want to keep playing.
Leaks on G# cluster and low A pad. Repair-and-sell project — good candidate for learning pad work on a forgiving instrument. When it did play, the tone was bright and projecting, typical of the early A-500 series.
A workhorse student horn from the era when Yamaha student models were still made in Japan. Bright, focused tone with a slightly resistant feel — it wants you to push air. Intonation is solid across the range, and the keywork is tight and predictable. A reliable grab-and-go horn.
Stripped down. A serious project — these Martins have a unique tone when they play, but this one needs everything.
An early Conn with the rolled tone holes. Needs a full rebuild — keywork, pads, corks, the lot.
Plays. Good ergonomics, decent pads. Warm and slightly spread tone with a comfortable, old-school American feel — the keywork has a bit of play but nothing that fights you. One of the more usable horns in the Miami stash.
Repadded with tan leather pads but unfinished — a flat spring on the upper-stack left-hand B key lost tension during reassembly, preventing full closure. Close to done once the spring is re-tensioned and key regulation is checked.
Needs a new neck cork (the original is compressed and no longer holds the mouthpiece snug), plus key regulation on the left-hand pinky cluster. Eventual full repad. A proper French-made horn with character — these Couesnon Monopoles have a reputation for a bright, singing tone in the upper register.
Nearly a hundred years old. Italian craftsmanship from the interwar period. Needs a full rebuild.
An Italian-branded alto. Light, free-blowing feel with a thin but pleasant tone — fine for casual practice. The keywork is basic but functional. Lives in Brussels for when practice happens there.
The one that started everything. A cheap Chinese-made horn that got me hooked — buzzy tone, stiff keywork, questionable intonation above the break, but it didn't matter. Lives in southern Italy now. Sentimental value only.
Why
Modern horns are precision-manufactured and mostly excellent out of the box. Vintage horns — Conn, King, Buescher, Martin, SML, early Selmers — were built differently. The brass is heavier, the engraving was done by hand, and the keywork feels noticeably different under your fingers. A lot of these instruments end up sitting in attics because professional repair costs more than their owners think they're worth.
I think they're worth it. I'm learning to prove that with my hands.
Plan
This is a workshop log — a record of learning vintage saxophone repair from scratch. Every horn I fix teaches me something new about pads, springs, keywork, and patience.
The long game is a small repair practice in Barcelona — a craft that doesn't need a screen to exist. For now, I'm documenting what I learn, one horn at a time.
Who
I'm Andrea. I live in Barcelona. By day I work in tech infrastructure. By evening I play saxophone (badly) and build electronic instruments. OhMySax is the part of my life where I work with my hands on something that was built to last a hundred years.
If you have a vintage horn that needs attention and you're patient enough to let a learner try — or if you know someone in Barcelona who repairs saxophones and might tolerate an enthusiastic apprentice — drop me a line.
Gear
Building a basic repair bench. This is what I'm working with so far: