Kevin Sun

Since arriving at school a few weeks ago, I've been playing on my friend's 1920s-era Conn tenor since mine has been in the shop for routine maintenance. Actually, I hadn't ever taken my horn into the shop—partially because once college started, things got too hectic to take it out for maintenance, and also because I didn't know who to trust. At Banff, Greg Tardy recommended a gentleman named Ken Beason, who does repairs in Asheville, North Carolina. Greg's a stickler for detail and also knows quite a bit about horn repair himself; having heard Greg's enormous sound (I maintain that he has the biggest sound of any tenor player I've ever heard live—Chris Potter, J.D. Allen, Joe Lovano) and also taking into consideration his experience on the road, I thought I'd take a chance.  I knew the horn had been set up by the great Emilio Lyons at one point, but it was more than a decade since that overhaul and it turns out my horn had suffered some serious dama...

While in Banff, I had the opportunity to learn from tenor saxophonist Greg Tardy about some of the more practical considerations regarding the saxophonic lifestyle: namely, issues of saxophone maintenance and equipment considerations. One of the more novel things he recommended to me was switching from a neckstrap with a plastic hook to one with a metal hook; the reason he gave was that making the switch would have a subtle impact on the quality of my sound—"It makes sense: metal on metal," he told me. I actually didn't believe him at first—as most people would, I'd think—but he immediately undid the plastic hook on the saxophone and put on his metal hook, asking me to play into the horn. I definitely heard a slight difference, and Greg added that replacing my plastic thumb hook with a metal one would also contribute to an improvement in my sound. His philosophy regarding horn maintenance and decisions about equipment can be summed up simply as, "It all adds up...