Welcome to Horned Toad music, home of Marin Spivack saxophone and mouthpiece restoration and facing, specializing in sales, purchase and restoration of interesting vintage musical instruments and equipment. This small shop is the product of a long time professional musician and musical instrument hunter’s obsession. I know how to find nice old musical treasures and being a musician myself I try to make them available to other musicians with honesty as my guiding principle.
Rather than feeling ripped-off like as is more and more common in today’s vintage musical instrument world, I want customers to feel good about their purchases and get years of use out of them. You can expect that your dealings with Horned Toad Music and myself will be very much straight, honest and above board. I will try to help educate you about your purchase as much as I can so you end up getting what you are looking for, and not wasting your money.
Musical items likely to find here would be:
Vintage saxophones,
such as Selmer Mk VI, Super Action (A.K.A. Super Balanced Action) Balanced Action, Conn 10m, King Silversonic and Super 20, “The Martin”, and even the occasional more recent offering.
Vintage saxophone restoration repair and overhaul. I had the good fortune to spend a lot of time with Ernie Sola over the years, who was kind enough to teach me many of his methods. I also have my good friend Bob Drinkwater to thank for sharing many old-hand secrets to woodwind setup. I also learned a few things from David Saul in S.F. back when.
Having been an active professional player as well and being very picky with setup, I often did my own regulation work on my horns. I have used the things I have learned from these long time woodwind techs and my own hand skill and specific preferred setup methods to develop ways to make vintage horns sing beautifully. I tend towards a kind of light action and a live setup, meaning the horn is free to vibrate in a specific way that I love as a player.
I am offering this service on an individual basis, due to my own backlog of work, please see services section for more info.
Vintage Saxophone mouthpieces,
such as Otto Link Florida and New York models, Selmer, Dukoff Hollywood, “stubby” and Supersonic models among others, MC Gregory, Berg Larsen and many more
Vintage guitars and amplifiers,
such as Fender, Gibson, Gretsch, Supro, Epiphone, Montgomery Ward, Kay and other fun things..
Vintage saxophone mouthpiece restoration by Marin Spivack to precision specs by hand. Modern saxophone mouthpiece restoration and modification. My mouthpieces are being played all over the world, from Asia through Europe to South and North America by professionally known players to amateurs as well. Please check the ‘Services’ section for details.
Used vintage saxophone and mouthpiece purchase and consignment sales; If you have something you need help selling I can do that as well.
Please look around the site, send your questions or comments and read what others have written of their experiences with the shop. THANKS!