How To Take Proper Care Of Your Sax

Now, I know everyone wants to have a nice, clean, shiny sax. I know I do. That's why I take good care of it. You should do the same thing to your instrument. There are a few items you will need to keep your horn in top shape. They are as follows:

A Polishing cloth (lacquer polish or silver polish if you have a silver horn), spit cloth, key oil, and cork grease.  These few things will keep your horn in great shape.

First, you want to wipe your horn off each time you get through playing it. You do this because your fingers sweat while you play, and your sweat contains various salts and oils.  These can damage the lacquer of your horn. Therefore, make sure you wipe down your entire horn and get all the pads dry.

Second, you want to get the spit out of the inside of your horn. You do this by pulling the spit cloth (the cloth with the string and weight attached to it) through the body of the horn. Cleaning kits usually come with two different spit cloths; one for the body, and one for the neck of the horn. Please don't attempt to pull the body cloth through the neck. It doesn't work! Clean the neck after you have cleaned the body. Now you are ready to put the sax back in its case.

After I play my instrument I usually rinse out my mouthpiece. This isn't really necessary to do after each time you play, but I like my horn to be at its cleanest. When you do rinse out your mouthpiece, make sure you DO NOT USE HOT WATER.  This can actually ruin your mouthpiece by deforming the baffle, which is the "slanted" part inside your mouthpiece.

Above, I mentioned that you needed key oil. Key oil isn't really needed after each time you play. I usually apply it only once to twice a year.  Cork grease however, should be applied more often. There is no certain time period at which to apply it. You can usually tell when you need it when the mouthpiece becomes harder to put on. I also put a little grease on the part of the neck that attaches to the body. This makes it a lot easier to put the neck on the horn.

That wraps it up for the saxcare section. If you think I have failed to mention any other aspect which may pertain to this section, please e-mail me.

HOME | Explore Yahoo! GeoCities