Why Saxophone Lacquer Matters… It’s NOT how you think

The Debate on Lacquered versus Unlacquered Saxophones

One saxophone is a 40-year-old Yanagisawa 880 tenor that I bought used about 8 years ago and that I played on it quite a bit. Notice, it has lacquer.

The other is a 6-year-old Yanagisawa WO2 tenor saxophone that I bought brand new and have played on quite a bit as well, probably the same or even less than the 880. Notice it does not have any lacquer and this came that way from the factory.

There is a debate in the saxophone community about whether or not the lacquer has an impact on how your saxophone plays. I can tell you for certain that it does, but not in the way you may think.

Should I Buy a Saxophone with Lacquer or no Lacquer?

I worked for many years as a saxophone repair technician and on YouTube I love doing experiments with saxophone gear to help people with their purchasing decisions.

If you are thinking about buying an unlacquered saxophone, you’re going to want to watch this. I got some pretty surprising results and came to a somewhat unexpected conclusion.

About 6 years ago I wanted to get a new tenor sax. I had been mainly playing a well-worn Mark 6 and liked how it looked kind of old, so I ordered this unlacquered Yanagisawa WO2 tenor and even though it’s still relatively new it looks pretty all right. On gigs guitar players will sometimes ask me how old my horn is and then they don’t believe me when I tell them.

Does a Saxophone Without Lacquer Play Better?

Now some would say that they want an unlacquered saxophone because somehow it plays better than one with lacquer. That’s certainly up for debate.

I can tell you that we are frequently testing out instruments at the factory without any lacquer on them and then playing those same instruments with lacquer and I have not noticed any difference in how they play that could be attributed to the lacquer or lack of lacquer. If lacquer makes a difference in how a saxophone plays it’s pretty minimal as far as I’m concerned.

What Happens to the Finish on an Unlacquered Saxophone?

As I said before I chose the unlacquered version of the Yanagisawa tenor for the looks. As you can see it’s developed a really nice patina and that happens quite quickly. When Yanagisawa sells these horns new, they’re highly polished and as soon as you start touching it you get marks like wherever you touch it.

Over time it evens out a bit as you see on this horn. There are spots where my hands touch the horn where I’m playing that are slightly polished, like on the right hand thumb hook, and on the left hand thumb rest. There you can actually see my fingerprint, that’s kind of crazy.

Other parts have gotten a bit nasty though and you can see this green vertigris around the braces connecting the bow to the body tube and the bell. In the 6 years I’ve had this horn I’ve never cleaned the outside in any way other than occasionally wiping off some excess moisture.

The inside has always been swabbed out after every playing session with one of these swabs which I strongly recommend you do. I’ve linked to these awesome swab kits here.

Cleaning an Unlacquered Saxophone

Since I’ve had the question several times before, I wanted to try a few different methods to clean this horn up a bit and I’ve got some unlacquered necks and ligatures to test this out on.

And just my disclaimer, if you’re not a repair technician and you don’t really know how to remove the keys and put them back on so everything works correctly, this is the sort of job you might want to ask a professional to do.

Water

All right, I’m going to start with this KB sax neck, it’s bronze. I’m just using a toothbrush and plain water on this.

So here it is. I just used water could go a little bit further on that but water does the trick and gets even some of the green stuff off of there.

Let’s move on to this ligature. This has a bit of vertigris on it, that green stuff that forms on the surface. That comes off with my finger.

Using a soft cloth and some water, it only took seconds to clean this ligature. This is a prototype made by Peter Jessen, my good friend who makes the G Mezzo soprano saxophone. These are going into production soon. This is going to be our BetterSax Burnin’ ligature.

Lemon Juice and Salt

All right now we have the original neck that came with that saxophone. I just want to do a little test at the end of the neck where the patina is not totally even. There are a few spots. One of these things we’ve got to try is salt and lemon juice. This is just an experiment before we do it on the horn. See what happens.

I’m going to apply that on one section of the neck. Wow, you can see instant results. That was just a little bit of lemon juice mixed with salt and that instantly cut through the patina, and went straight down to the brass underneath.

That’s definitely not the look I was going for but it would be interesting to see what happens to this. It’s almost like if you could remove the patina a bit because you didn’t like how it came out, and then let it come back.

Here it is not 24 hours later, and it’s interesting how that patina is kind of coming back really fast. I think you could do that salt and lemon juice treatment on certainly sections of a saxophone to remove the patina and have confidence that it’s going to come back.

Disassembling and Cleaning an Unlacquered Saxophone Body

One thing that’s really important is going to be removing all of that lemon juice and salt and you’re going to have to have the horn completely disassembled if you’re going to do that on the saxophone part.

I’m just going to remove the bell keys on this horn and then do a little bit of cleaning trying to get rid of some of the green gunk on this. I’m just going to go in there with this microfiber cloth and some water.

Water

You know this part of the horn on the back of the bell, it gets a lot of moisture there. It looks pretty nasty. First step should just be to clean it with some water.

Water gets most of the stuff off pretty easily, but there are spots where even going at it with a toothbrush with the water is not going to remove the green because it has oxidized.

It’s just too corroded. So once again I’m going to go in there with the salt and lemon juice mixture.

Lemon Juice and Salt

You can see, if we look up close, most of that green is gone. There are a couple little specks that I didn’t get to, which I can go back and try to grab those.

The next day, the patina was already starting to come back. So, after spending a couple hours messing with cleaning the worst spots on this horn, I kind of gave up.

At first there were some really bad green spots that I wanted to remove, but once I got those I realized that to get rid of all the green I would have to remove all the keys and just spend a lot of time scrubbing. I did clean up the dirtiest parts of the horn and it’s definitely an improvement, but I learned something in the process that I want to share with you.

Weighing the Pros and Cons

While an unlacquered saxophone does look quite cool and it is an easy way to play on a brand new saxophone that looks vintage, there is definitely a reason why we typically put lacquer on saxophones. Not only do lacquered saxophones look great and shiny and new, but that lacquer protects the brass or bronze as the case may be.

One saxophone which was played by the same person in the same climate under the same conditions for about the same amount of time as the other, it’s not just looking older because of the unlacquered patina, but the springs are much more rusty than on any of my other Yanagisawa saxophones, and I have several.

The pivot screws and key rollers are much more prone to getting frozen due to corrosion. The keys have a layer of green scum on them that is just difficult to remove. I don’t get that on a lacquered saxophone.

Based on its condition after only 6 years it’s clear that this Yanagisawa tenor will need more frequent maintenance than my others that are lacquered. When I want to clean a lacquered horn up, it’s a much easier and faster process.

I made a video where I did exactly that to a Yanagisawa alto that I’ve had for about 20 years now. I’ve linked to that video here if you’re interested in checking it out.

Conclusion

Overall, I don’t think that the lacquer makes a noticeable difference to how a horn sounds or plays. It does affect the look of a saxophone more than anything.

If you want that vintage look then yes, an unlacquered saxophone is pretty cool but there are some trade-offs. It’s going to require a lot more effort to keep it clean, you’re going to have a lot more rust and corrosion than on a lacquered saxophone, and you’re going to get those green vertigris spots that aren’t easy to remove.

I still love this horn, I’m glad I have it and I think it looks great, but I wanted to share my experience with you as a little PSA for what it’s worth.

Please let me know in the comments what you think and if you want to see the process of me doing what we call a COA or clean oil and adjust on that Yanagisawa alto I mentioned, watch this video next.