Superpads

What are Superpads?

Superpads are individually custom hand-made pads for each instrument to which they are to be fitted.

Superpads for Clarinet , which have been going for over 30yrs now, are totally different in construction to Superpads for Saxophone , which have only recently been developed.

The fundamental difference between them is that the Clarinet  pads are a 1mm synthetic facing on a cork base, whereas the Saxophone ones comprise a 'sandwich' of different specially selected materials covered by that 1mm Superpad facing to form the Saxophone pad.

• They are very quiet.
  
• They're impervious to moisture so don't swell & as a result, destroy the adjustment between keys.
  
• As no force or stress is introduced at any stage of manufacture or fitting, Superpads are exceptionally stable.
  
• Superpads are compliant enough to be forgiving, yet firm enough to be accurate.
  
• They’re reactive enough to return back to shape yet not spongy in any way.
  
• Adjacent places on the surface of the pad are unaffected by each other, allowing the microscopic inaccuracies of the tone hole to be accommodated.
  

A complete overhaul of a Bb, A, Eb, C or D clarinet, including Superpads  is currently £395 and usually takes approximately 2-3 days.

 Alto & Bass Clarinets are of course more, as are Bassoons. They are not suitable for either Oboes or Flutes.

Saxophone Superpads

After many years I've developed a completely new Saxophone Pad which not only has Superpad material instead of leather on the outside, but which also uses several different materials inside instead of the normal felt disc. 

Yes, for more years than I can remember I've been trying to apply the tremendous advantages of Superpads for clarinet to the saxophone - without success!! They just don't work on saxes for a number of reasons, one obvious reason being the much larger diameter of saxophone pads. And let's face it, most saxophones appear to seal pretty well from new anyway don't they? - Well yes & no!

Saxophones have a similar mechanism to flutes in that most of the keys you press will close an additional one or two keys at the same time. In order to work correctly those 2 or 3 keys must shut exactly at the same time & it's not possible to regulate them to do so unless each one individually shuts correctly.  And as the materials from which they're made i.e. leather & felt, move independently under the influence of moisture & temperature, in fact they don't close together & it's only by pressing harder that this disparity between the keys is overcome (surely your teacher tells you not to do that - yea but without realising it your teacher's doing it as well)!! 

So it's the materials from which the pads are made (an animal skin covering felt in the case of a saxophone & bassoon or the same animal's intestine covering  the felt in the case of a clarinet or flute), that's causing the problem  -  which leads to the following train of thought.

Some time ago in about seventeen hundred & something, it must have dawned on some smart-alec that the six or seven holes drilled in the side of the tube down which he/she blew in order to make music, had to be  put in places that ones fingers could actually reach & be of a size that the fingers could cover. Oh, & there really needed to be a few more holes than the available number of fingers!

And that meant that the existing holes were extremely unlikely to be in the right place or be of the right size acoustically.

And so key-work mechanisms came about in order to remotely open & close larger holes in places the fingers couldn't reach, & this in turn required the invention of a resilient pad of some sort in order to act as a valve or cover on the holes.

Apart from the early attempts using leather on a flat paddle-like key & pewter pads, the most effective solution, taking into account the fact that the pad had to be fairly compliant to accommodate the poor mechanics of the day & also relatively quiet in use, was to use a soft bag of horse-hair which could easily mould itself to the shape of the hole it was intended to cover.

And over 200 years later, what is it we use on our modern instruments??...................a bag of horse-hair!!

Well okay, it's slightly more sophisticated in that it's now a disc of felt covered by an animal skin but does that really represent a couple of hundred years progress??

In medical terms, 200 years ago the doctor would be saying "Right sir, we're just going to strap you down on this table, stuff this cloth in your mouth to stop you screaming too much & then saw your leg off"!!

Today, 200 years later the doctor might say " Oh no sir, we don't do that any more. It's what we call key-hole surgery these days. You can walk home in a couple of hours".

The new Superpads for saxophone avoid all these problems.  They're designed so that they're the opposite of the normal pad which by nature of its construction is pulled inwards from the centre to the edges. By contrast Superpads are made so that the outer edge sits proud to cover the tone-hole like a dustbin lid (an old fashioned tin dustbin - not a wheelie bin)!! They're unaffected by moisture & normal temperature changes so their movement is virtually nil & they're very much quieter so the sound engineer isn't going to complain about the racket any more. Once set in the right position they stay there so the fine relationship between the keys & those they actuate remains constant  -  for ever!! 

How much & how long?

A  complete overhaul including Superpads has a base rate of £750 but because of the wide range of both age & condition of instruments in use, may require  a quote first. 

This cost is way beyond what most saxophonists are brought up to expect for an overhaul but it must be remembered that this proceedure can't be compared to that of a standard overhaul & is for the very serious saxophonist only. A small pointer to the relatively high amount is the fact that it takes over a day to simply make the pads, let alone overhaul a saxophone using them!