Very nice and sturdy tenor in for an overhaul/repad. We’re getting fairly deep on this one with a new set of black Roopads, levelled tone holes, possibly some key fitting, thorough cleaning, and all new materials of course, including pearls. I have never tried a Dolnet before but I believe it’s has a pretty solid fanbase out there, and I am looking forward to seeing how this sounds for myself.
The tone holes were pretty unlevel on this horn but I have found a tool that has nearly doubled my speed at levelling tone holes as well as a new finishing method that gets excellent results.
One pivot screw was frozen to the point of needing to drill it out. This is the first instance of having to do this, and hopefully the last as it requires removing the post, boring a hole, filling in the hole with a brass bushing, soldering the bushing, followed by drilling, tapping and resoldering. If I could have guaranteed my bored hole was straight I would have drilled and tapped the bushing, but I felt a little uneasy with that and opted for marking the centre and carefully aligning it in the drill press after scribing and centre punching the work. I have also needed to rebuild one of the palm key screws on this horn.
The screws are all Metric and took me a while to figure out the main pivot/hinge rod sizes. The hinge rods are M2.5 x 0.45 and pivot screws are M3 x 0.5. I cannot come up with a good reason except propriety that they chose different and obscure thread sizes like this.
There were dents under one of the palm keys and below the bottom thumb rest which were taken out fairly easily and are no longer noticeable.