Silencing those noisy keys

When a cork falls off of a saxophone player's palm key, most of them will start to freak out due to the noise thats the key makes hitting the body. In today's blog I will talk about how your local technician will fix this problem, along with how to fix this problem yourself if you are not able to get to the repair shop.

When this problem comes to a technician it is a very simple fix that can be done while you wait. The technician will take the palm key off of the saxophone and clean the key off. After the key is cleaned and dried, a piece of cork 3/64 cork is cut to fit the key. After the cork is fitted to the key, the key and cork is layered with a coat of cement glue. The glue must dry on the cork first before applying to the key. This will take about 5 to 10 minutes. Once the glue is dry, the technician will set the cut cork to the key and then will put key back on the horn. He will then shave the cork down or leave as is, depending on how far the key has to open. This is what the finish product looks like:

Now lets talk about how you could do this simple fix if you are on a gig. Take some electrical tape and cut it into small squares that you can stack on top of each other. Stack about six of them together and put them under the palm key. Here is what it should look like:

So this is how you silence those keys if they are making to much noise while you're jamming out.

~MT~