Welcome to C Sax.net – a brand new theme for 2010 !

Just rebuilding a couple of 20′s King C-Mels. Quite forgotten how subtly different their mechanism is from period Conn, Buescher and Martin

We Three Kings...

The finished article...

OK, I know it’s ‘three kings’ – the brass one at the back is my King stencil, ‘Big Ugly’

(Published from twitter)

Resurrected my vintage Roland Jazz Chorus 50 amp, from the depths of the garage. Built in reverb, chorus etc. – the old rivets/studs look amazing !

Just the thing for giving the old C Melody a bit more presence !!

The ‘chorus’ effect can be switched to vibrato, sounds like Hank Marvin on a bad day, or a Farfisa organ – remember those ?

  Hey – just a minute, I’ve heard of ‘time flying’, but this is ridiculous, nearly two weeks since the last post…

Well, I have been a bit busy, and trying to get things organised to either sell on eBay, or add to the ‘for sale’ page on the website.  Which (incidentally) is now starting to have the changes added in, so that what’s listed there is actually what I have left to sell – not what was sold some time ago – bit radical I know, but there you go !

Anyway, in the course of trying to work out what to keep, I decided to try out a bunch of alto mouthpieces.  What sax to try them on, the modern Orpheus Pro, a modest modern Aquilasax alto, or an old beaten up Martin (stencil) ‘Penn’ ?  “I know”, I thought – I’ll try them all on all three…

Guess which sax I enjoyed playing most.  Yes, the old battered 30’s Penn, a Martin/IBI-Co stencil, the one on the right in the picture.  Not quite as easy or as fast as the modern ones, but fun !  No articulated whotsits, no  high-G keys (or even high-F# keys), no ‘tilting pinkie table’ and a mix of pads that’d make any tech wince.  But it could get ‘down and dirty’ with the best of them.  Fun, with a capital ‘F’ !

So, I thought, let’s give the old Martin C-Melody, and the Martin stencil tenor a blast as well…   Do you know, switching between them all was a piece of cake, same basic ‘feel’, same basic layout.  And, my favourite old Couf mouthpieces worked a treat on all three of them as well.  No surprise there then…

I may well have to go all ‘retro’ and stay in the past !  Certainly all three deserve a little bit of time on the bench, a quick strip-down, check the state of the pads and cork, lube, rebuild, tweak a few springs and a final leak-light test – even tho’ they all play quite well now.  I’ll give each one a separate topic as I go.

The Martins are back !!  Battered, bruised, and beautiful, the boys are back in town….

Also coming up soon -

Lewis’ latest C Project…

The ‘Horace’ – why it was named that !

More C-Melody videos, and much much more….

 “Oh no, here we go again”, I hear you say…  Unfortunately time, and software, moves on relentlessly.  The old blog themes either required too much maintenance, became relatively inflexible, or had potential security (spam, hacking) loopholes.  So I’ve gone for a new look theme which should last through at least the next round of WordPress upgrades, with enough flexibility to be changed without learning (yet more) new programming skills – and pulling out what little is left of my hair in the process.

I just want to spend my spare time playing – and fixing – horns, and enjoying the delights of Dorset, seems reasonable to me ?  I’ve looked hard and long, checked out more than a few, and this new theme is functionally (at least on the surface…) quite similar to it’s predecessor.  All the original content is still there, website pages and forum are accessible in much the same way, accounts are the same, and the only really obvious change is that the ‘Comments’ button is now in the top right corner of each topic/post.  I’ll resist the urge to dive into the code and move it to where it used to be, and just say “enjoy !”

I’ve grafted the retro-style link picture links from the old pages onto top and bottom of each page, so you should be able to find everything.  Those only interested in the C-Saxophone aspects of the blog should click on the ‘C Saxophones’ link in the bar above the latest topic – clicking on the ‘Home’ link restores all topics. 

Guess it’s time to walk the dog, and enjoy another wee glass of red…  Or two…

Well, after a hard winter, and a ‘dieting’ spring, here’s the new (almost) three stone lighter me…  Glasses don’t even sit straight any more, sigh – and you can see why I usually wear a cap…

I owe it all to Slimming World (free vouchers courtesy of the doctor, and the outgoing Labour government’s ‘nanny state’) and an iron will to lose the weight.  Still managed to let a moderate amount of red wine thro’ though !

Now all I have to do is keep it off – somehow I think that’s going to be even harder than losing it. Oh well, I guess it gives me something else to keep those grey cells occupied !

Hopefully you’ll soon be reading this on a new-style blog, the old template seems not to be playing ball with the perpetual upgrades, so a new, blue’ish blog is just around the corner…

Kepp smiling, and keep C’ing.

It would seem that my blog has started misbehaving on Internet Explorer, but not Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome – Oh joy, what next..?

I apologise for the fact that – at least for Internet Explorer users – that some of the text in the top part of the right sidebar has assumed rather large proportions.  I tend to use Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, so had not noticed the problem, which probably cropped up on the latest upgrade.

I’ll see if it’s easily fixable, but if not the content may move to a new design.

Rest assured, it’ll be the same content, but with a different look. Might just try and find a free theme which gets closer to the look of the old (handwritten) ‘cblog’ – but requiring minimal customisation… Hmmm.

   You’ve possibly noticed (I hope) a relatively new section in the right column * csax_net tweets… * which feeds back any of my Twitter ‘tweets’ to the blog – it can get pretty confusing, as I ‘tweet’ all the topics from the blog, but then they come back again as if by magic – although you will also notice stuff there that is purely from Twitter, plus any comments from (e.g.) TheSaxDoctor a.k.a. Stephen Howard…   So if you’re on Twitter, look me up, I’m csax_net – I had to use ‘underscore’ in the name, they don’t do dots…

Whilst Twitter is a recent toy, I’ve been on Facebook for yonks – yes, it’s currently the same picture on both – it’s a good way to ‘spread the word’, and (certainly on Facebook) keeps me in touch with globally extended family and friends by both word and pictures.  There’s nowhere in cyberspace to hide these days…

Anywhere else ?  Well, apart from Friends Re-united and Genes Re-United, I’ve an even older presence on Windows Live / Messenger and probably loads more I’ve momentarily forgotten that are out there, sadly neglected, fading in the mists of time as life – and fads – move relentlessly on.

Well, today I said fond farewell to two more of my rapidly dwindling stack of C Melody saxophones – one has gone to Devon, and t’other to the South of France.  I wish them well in their new homes, and I’m sure we’ll be following the progress of at least one of them on this blog, as the new owners breathe life into them…

As they patiently sat on the bench waiting for the courier(s) to collect them, I took a picture of the two well packed beauties – and in the middle (by comparison) is what can only be called a ‘cardboard sleeve’ which was all the packaging that one of my saxes came from the US in !  It didn’t even cover the case completely – the ends stuck out – and the sax  and bits inside had no more protection than would be used hand-carrying it to a gig…  But the sax miraculously survived, and it played right out of the case – maybe more than it did when it went into the case ???

I’ll dearly miss one of them, it was the lacquered King C Melody – I’d been promising myself that I’d get it up to scratch and see if it could give my 30’s Martin a run for it’s money.  Never happened.  I’ve finally realised that there is only a finite amount of time, and too many demands on that.  Sigh…

Just to remind all readers that the C Forum is still very much ‘open for business’ !

Anyone with an interest in the new Aquilasax – I play one myself – can read a very recent post by Steve Wedgwood of Aquilasax, addressing comments in the "Is the Aquilasax neck the root of any intonation problems ?" topic in the Aquilasax section.

 Is this the largest collection of 1920/1930′s C Melody sax necks ever photographed ?

So anyway, one night, probably after a relaxing glass of scrumpy – oh those carefree pre-diet days – I had this great idea to collect all the necks from the nineteen odd C Melody saxophones that sit there patiently waiting to be brought back to life (nineteen or so, obviously not counting the modern Aquilasax with its two necks…).  The first part of checking them out is to try and play the blinkin’ things, and without a corked neck it’s a hindrance (some/most have remnants of 1920′s cork still clinging on for dear life) so the thought of a mass neck-corking session seemed more productive than the normal masking/insulation/gaffer/ptfe tape – or folded over till receipt – temporary solution which can last for weeks/months/years if done well.

(Update) Just found another C neck (phew!) – I’d taken the nickel plated Conn neck out to be photographed against modern nickel plate, for a SoTW topic, so I’ll give the neck gnome a little slack on that one…