what should i do with this broken sax?
 

I found a saxophone that has all its parts except the top part -- the part that screws into the rest of the saxophone. Yeah, this is a pretty significant part, obviously, but it has all the buttons for you to press and all that other fun shit, so I figure I could get SOME use out of it.

So, what would you do with it? Just try to find that little part? Or do something even crazier with it? I was thinking of making it a highly devoted part of a percussion set. I've already used it on certain songs to sounds you might hear in a gamelan performance, and it sounds pretty great. When you hit it different parts of the sax, it emits a different tone, some parts resonate more than others. Keep in mind this thing is pretty damn beat up, period, if you couldn't have gussed. Here's what it looks like:

Just rejoice in the fact that it is broken.

Put a blowhorn on the end where the reed goes.

use it as a dildo. i'm surprised you haven't tried it yet.

that's a good idea. do you thinkI could still"play" it this way? I'd like to figure out a way I could still manipulate the sound in meaningful ways.

You should be able to find a mouthpiece relatively cheaply. Depending on the action on the keys, it may not be as fucked as you think. If it is fucked then you've got a quartertonal sax that'll play multiphonics pretty easily. I'd go for repairing it over finding other uses for it, just because you could easily send it past the point of no return, and then you've just got an elaborately-shaped bit of metal.

yeah, I mean if I blow in it now, it does absolutely nothing. I actually stuck the trumpet into the saxophone hole, if that makes sense (again, I could probably take a cool picture of it) and managed to get some weird sounds out of it -- beyond just weird sounds out of the trumpet, period.

I'd get a mouthpiece and try it. Also with the mouthpiece you could then move on, throw the sax away, and put the mouthpiece on more complex instruments like cruches or watering cans.

Uh, yeah, you won't get any sounds out of it unless you had an extraordinarily large mouth/ lips. I'm guessing you don't. You can just about get a sound out of a clarinet with a brass embouchure and no mouthpiece, but it's unlikely with a sax.

get a mouthpiece its the cheapest part of the whole instrument.

i play the clarinet

A Broken Sax sounds like something Jeff would fix in Earthbound, into something like the "Precision Beam".

I realize this does not help your predicament though, sorry.

~Jeremy~

Attach the whole thing to some kind of airtight foot pumped bellows like device, holding it at chest height but pumping the air in using that. Actually, I might want to build that.

i think using the sax for percussion is a bad idea, you could get a different metal tube from the hardware store that's more durable and not ruin a instrument that's worth money

the part that screws on as in:


the metal part? the ligature? because you could get probably get one for
under $10

I don't know if it'll work but it's worth a try...and if it doesn't work...then you'll have a blow horn.

Hm, yeah, that's part of it, I tried to illustrate it in my picture, but I guess I'm talking about the entire top part like... about 7 inches of the sax is gone. Why don't I take a digital picture when I get a chance?

Thanks for all the ideas so far everyone!

i see what you mean i think (the neck) and that wouldn't be a cheap fix,probably $60 for a totally shit one.

but if you got a replacement and made a whole sax you would probably be able to sell it, if it's a real brand and not unplayable/unfixable

Scream in it, make some crazy freejazz!:):)

buy the missing part(s) and learn to play the damn thing

always do, my friend ;)

http://www.myspace.com/scissorshock