Solid wood finger buttons for saxophone, the touch pieces your fingers rest on, made to replace the plastic, imitation pearl, or real mother-of-pearl ones your horn came with.
Pearls are wear parts. They wear down under your fingers over years of playing, and once one wears through, the brass cup underneath starts wearing next, and brass is the expensive part: replacing a worn pearl cup runs about $60 to 80 per key at my bench. Replacing worn pearls is maintenance for the key work before it becomes a repair. You can see what that wear looks like in the photo below.
If your pearls have reached their time anyway, the new set doesn't have to be plain. These are the one part of the horn your fingers touch the whole time you play, and they can be as understated or as loud as you want the horn to look.
Installation is a bench job: the old pearls come off and these are set in their place, easiest whenever your horn is already in for service, and I am happy to talk your tech through it, I am a tech myself.
Fit
- Selmer sets: fit all Selmer saxophones (built to the Mark VI touch profile).
- Yamaha sets: fit all Yamaha saxophones.
- Vintage horns (Conn, Keilwerth and similar): usually a custom set, made to measurements.
- Not sure? Send me the make and model and I will tell you straight whether a stock set fits or what a custom one takes.