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Martin Committee III

FullSizeRender-2One of the perks of having a repair shop is that people will call the shop looking to sell an instrument.

Recently a gentleman called and said he had a Martin saxophone that was given to him when he was in 5th grade. He was 60 years old so you can do the math. He brought it over to, Brooklyn brass & Reed. I looked at the horn and told him it needed an overhaul. He said he was only interested in selling the sax because he wanted to play bass. I haven’t had a tenor sax for a while as I have been concentrating more on alto sax these days. But I made him a reasonable offer and he accepted. So I got myself a beautiful Martin Committee III. Serial number 152401, that dates the horn to 1942.

Nick Hotto another customer of mine brought me a Martin committee III that he just found on Craiglist. It was from the the late 60’s. A beautiful sax! The horns feel great. The only problem I had was the feel of the thumb rest.

The thumb rests on these horns is on an adjustable slider. It comes off, so I found a more contemporary or more ergonomically feeling thumb rest from another sax and I brazed (silver soldered it) to a piece of brass. FullSizeRender-8Now the sax feels great. It already sounded fantastic. They just made the thumb rests too small. Why?

I also do a thing where I add palm key risers. I first solder a small piece of brass to the palm key then I use epoxy over that.  I like high risers on these keys.The rubber Runyon palm key risers are a good idea but they don’t always stay on and they really aren’t high enough for me. FullSizeRender-6So here’s a photo of the risers. Now the horn feels great.

The upper and lower stack keys are fine just the way they are. They made the pearls big enough, not like the Conn 10M or 6M saxes. That’s the problem with those. The pearls on the left and right hands just feel too small.

I think these horns sound great. I know the Selmer MK VI is kind of the gold standard but these horns have been over looked. After doing the thumb rest and palm keys the horn feels comfortable.

The sax plays wide open in the upper register, huge all over. As good as any MK VI I have played.

If you have any comments or suggestions contact Ruben at BB&R.  Also if you want to here a bit of this tenor go to Ruben’s band and you can hear some tunes we recorded at a rehearsal a few weeks ago.

All the best to all. take care and stay tuned. redrube