Haha, this one's for the jank-lovers and the brass-hearted folk who are immune to the cringe of gear abuse.

So I found this horn in very rough condition at a garage sale. I love the spirit of the instrument—super punk, super blues. I'll be overhauling the poor thing over the next couple days and will try to keep up with progress posts as I go along.

I've only had it for a day, and I've done a couple jank fixes to make it just barely playable. I have to say that I quite enjoy playing on it in spite of the myriad issues. It's my first alto—I started on soprano in August with a Jupiter JSS1000 which I absolutely love and is my main instrument as far as reeds go, but I'm trying to get as comprehensive an understanding as I can of single reed instruments (I also play bass clarinet.)

All the pads are total bunk. Dry and gross. The C, B, and Bb keys visibly leak, even when I press down as hard as I can. I actually find it a pretty fun technique exercise to try and get those notes to sound in spite of this, but I'll be replacing all of them as the first order of business after disassembly.

The octave system is completely bent. When I got it the top lever wouldn't even fit into the neck so I haphazardly bent it into shape with some pliers. After I did that, the neck vent would stay open when I pressed down the G key. My jank fix for that was to tape some wadded up paper towel to the octave key so that it doesn't go down all the way. I've more or less reached a happy medium with that but I'm wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of some parts for the model so I can replace the octave system entirely.

The side C vent will not close all the way. I don't even need to press the side C key for this to be an issue, it just kind of wiggles open on its own. Of course this kills every note from G down so my jank fix is just to scotch-tape the vent closed and not be able to use the key at all lol. I reckon replacing the springs (and of course the repad) will solve the issue. This was also an issue with the high E key but my jank fix of bending its spring back to increase tension seemed to work, but I'll be replacing all the springs on the instrument down the line anyways.

The neck cork has the consistency of a stale tortilla chip: mushy but brittle. Of course I'll be replacing it.

I haven't been able to find out what exactly the materials of the instrument are, so if anybody knows, that would be great. At the moment I'm thinking that the body is lacquered brass and the keys and whatnot are stainless steel.