Selmer MkVI Alto Repair – Emergency!

It’s Wednesday morning, the phone rang and I happened to pick it up to hear a somewhat distressed sounding musician friend, either he’d just missed out on the gig of a lifetime that paid huge £ (do they still exist?!)…OR, and as it turns out this was it, he had knackered his very expensive Selmer Saxophone! After suffering a tumble over some PA equipment he dusted himself off and took one look at his Selmer MarkVI Alto and doubtless had ‘kittens’…see for yourself:

I’m not sure the pics really cover the amount of damage this bell section had received. The low Bb guard area had been very severely battered in and the inside of the bell looked rather crumpled, importantly the low Bb tonehole was looking decidely worse for wear so my initial reaction when it arrived in the workshop was that it could be in trouble.

Anyway, after what can only be described as massive trauma surgery the Sax came out an hour later looking and playing like new! Adrian and Mark in the workshop worked their magic and not only was the dent not visible but the tonehole was back in a circular shape! The removal of the ‘dent’ was a particularly tricky procedure, one approach would have been to remove the guard to get a better approach at raising the body back but actually by choosing the correct dent removal tools and applying pressure in the correct area the guard being attached gave some strength to the area and aided the correct return to shape of the tonehole. Interestingly the brass on these vintage saxes responds differently to pressure so our approach may have been different on a modern sax. Check out the end results:

So Selmer Mark VI owners…don’t despair if you fall on your sax, we can probably sort it out! Our customer went away happy and is gigging the instrument tonight.

I should point out whilst we can offer ’emergency repair’ facilities our miracle working skills can be dependant on other work throughout the day. Best bet, give the repair department a call on 01628 630 800 and they’ll book you in a slot.