Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Conn New Wonder Series I Alto Project


Hello, Here are some pictures of my Conn New Wonder Series I alto saxophone. I bought half of it, and my Mother, lovingly, paid for the other half. I was going to completely restore it myself, but I had only been able to replace a few pads, and then polish it.

Now I am extensively polishing it, and I am going to run a glass bead blast over the body, to restore the satin texture. This is a long, and frustrating process. But it is fun, once the final result is achieved.

When it was playing, it sounded amazing. I took it to a few Basketball games at the highschool, to play with the band, and I did some improvising during half time behind the bleachers, with my friend Melvin. He was playing bass. We were mostly playing Funk, and some Marcus Miller tunes, which excuse me, but kicked A**! The Principle even came up to tell us we sounded great, and we were not even playing for anyone. I loved the sound, it was perfect, it was darkish, and soprano like on the higher notes, and sounded fat, and perfect. I loved it. Now, I am mostly polishing it. It looks horrible at the moment, with the scratches, and I am currently getting rid of the gunk in hard places. I am going to have it the sam as my tenor, and Repad it with Roo Pads with airtight brass, Noyek Star, gold plated resonators. I don't know if I want to use shellac, or hot glue yet. I have had better results with hot glue, so far.

I am going to have to replate the gold inside of the bell. It is very faded, and barely noticeable. It is a great saxophone, but just needs restoration. I am hoping to buy a Glass Bead Blaster when I am done working on my car, or possibly during, so that I may use it for my car as well. I just need MONEY! But that requires work, and work is not always fun, but it is required, if you want to have things. I will be taking more orders, and flipping more hamburgers to pay for this, but I can do it. The sax was completely black when I purchased it off of ebay for only $220. What a frickin steal. Really, a sax that great, for $3000 less than a brand new Selmer? Even with paying someone else for the restoration, I would save a few thousand dollars. I am wanting to do the work on this horn, because my mother bought it for me, because I wanted to fix it, and play it. I really love her, and I will never sell this horn.

Here are some pictures below, of the polished areas. I have the majority of tarnish removed from the keys, but I have to go over it with jeweler's rouge, to remove the scratches. I will also need to do some minor replating, or I may have Doc do that to some of the keys. even though some of the wear is very unnoticeable, I want it to look like it came out of the Conn Factory.

I have a case for it, which I am also restoring, and my mother wants to redo it. It will look fantastic. The case, though, did not come with the sax, but came with a parts horn, and it is in good condition, on the exterior, but needs to be redone, as well as the interior of the case.

I am leaving the horn as original as possible, except for one thing, and that is the thumbrest. I am leaving it Conn, but I am replacing it with the thumbrest off of a Conn New Wonder Series II parts horn, and I am going to have it silver plated, and soldered on by Doc.

Here are the pics, please enjoy.

1 comment:

ANDO said...

Is that only saxophone you can play?
Why you so much love saxophone?