I just have to post something, so here you go:

Breaking a saxophone is much easier than one would expect.  It is costly to repair but it can happen on complete accident.  So far, I have broken a couple.  Let me tell you how:

Breaking an Alto Saxophone

To break an alto saxophone, just put too much force on the valve on the neck.  It will snap off…many times.  Throughout elementary school, my alto saxophone has had to be resoldered about 6 or 7 times because of this.  Of course, I can now play low and high much more easily because of this, so it did have its benefits.

Breaking a Bari Sax

The rods are quite long and fragile as I found out.  I placed the sax on a chair and it fell off and bent one of the longer rods.  It’s quite bad when the instrument stops being able to play some of the lower notes because of that.

The next two happened rather recently and over a two week period.  They were separate saxes, too.

Breaking another Bari Sax

To break a bari sax is simple.  All it takes is a plastic hook on your neckstrap that does not have much structural stability.  Just rest your arms on the sax and let the hook unsnap and the sax will do a flip through the air, hit the ground, break the support that is holding the bell in position, and bend the bell about 3 inches to the side.  Oh yea, they were able to fix it…with a lot of solder.

Breaking Yet Another Bari Sax

I opened the case, pulled it out, and one of the palm keys (or at least that’s what I refer to it as) fell off.  I have no idea how, but it just did.  I had to perform 15 minutes later, so this was rather unfortunate.

Should I be allowed to be around saxes anymore?