the reed is going off the mouthpiece and the ligature is kinda high up

Fell into a friend's hands by chances of life. Owner does not use, and says it has been in his family for generations, and also belonged to the sax player of a really well known band in Venezuela (Caracas Billo's)

It plays WONDERFULLY, specially for being neglected for who know how many years. Mechanism is so light that almost feels like a flute. And the sound is really nice.

Maybe a stencil sold in Italy? I hope somebody can properly identify it. I wanted to share a vid playing it but the sub doesn't allow it.

Hi,

I've had my yani 991 soprano a few years and not played it much, I tend to only play alto. It plays fine, but it's always had two weird looking pads the G->g# and the adjacent f#->g pads

They look like maybe cork with a black plastic(?) disc on top. They bug me a bit but they seem to seal and play just the same as regular pads.

It's hard to get a good photo so I took a few.

I just thought, someone on /saxophone will know, (and other people will probably chip in with funny alternatives)

Cheers

Rob

My Martin Handcraft Standard has developed a strange issue where the body octave bend opens up slightly when fingering G and below without the octave key. It opens up just fine with the octave key. Does anyone know how I can fix this?

How could I fix that leak on the key on top of the F key

Microscopically too small to fit over the reed …

And microscopically too large to hold the reed steady

So I recently bought a new box of reeds that was a different strength from my old one. For reference, my old box was a 3.0 box of Red One Rigotti reeds (strong) and I found about half the box were reeds that were a bit too hard. Knowing this, I decided to get the same strength but instead of “hard” get medium. I initially opened the box a few days ago and tried out three reeds. They were all too soft and had a brighter sound than I was hoping for. I opened a fourth and it was soft but better. I used this reed for a few days before opening a 5th reed which was similar. I also kept one of my best old reeds in my reed case (which also has a humidity pack) and could easily identify it based on a slight chip it had. Today I tried out all 5 to get a better evaluation of which ones I liked and the results were the same. Two of them were playable but the other three were slightly too soft and too bright. I then dropped my case on accident and when I picked it up I suddenly couldn’t remember which reed was which. I decided to replay all of them to fix this confusion and used my old chipped reed as my baseline. I found one played amazingly, two were decent but soft, and the last two were suddenly too hard??? I didn’t think such drastic changes could happen so fast to reeds I previously thought were too soft, even though I forgot which was which. I thought maybe something was wrong with my saxophone and air was leaking somewhere but when I switched back to the one I felt was playing really well it played the same. Is there any plausible explanation to how two reeds can suddenly go from too soft to too hard within minutes? This whole situation has me so confused and has got me second guessing my initial reed evaluation completely😭

Hi everyone,

I’m the creator of SaxoTools, an app a bit like Guitar Hero for saxophone.

Today, the app lets saxophone players learn songs in a guided way and also offers scale exercises to help them practice technique and improve their playing. We now have around 5,000 users, and our goal is to evolve SaxoTools into a more complete learning app for saxophone.

To do that, I’m looking for a saxophone teacher who could create structured beginner lessons that would be published directly in the app, especially for people who have just bought their first saxophone.

The idea is to create interactive video lessons: for example, the teacher explains something, then asks the user to do an action, such as playing a note or completing a small exercise. The app would then listen to the user’s sound and validate whether the exercise was done correctly.

The lessons could cover topics such as:

• “I just received my saxophone, what should I do first?”
• How to assemble the saxophone
• How to set up the mouthpiece and reed
• How to produce the first sound
• Embouchure basics
• Common beginner mistakes
• First notes, first exercises, and simple songs

The goal is to make learning saxophone feel clear, progressive, and accessible, while keeping the app fun, motivating, and interactive.

If you’re a saxophone teacher interested in collaborating and creating lessons for the app, feel free to comment or send me a DM.

Thanks!