[analog31]

I play a stringed instrument. Good repairers are a dying breed, and worth their weight in gold. These instruments are meant to be played, and get taken out and knocked around. Repairs often involve specialized skills that a musician can't tackle ourselves.

[DavidPeiffer]

I played saxophone through middle school and high school. I loved watching the repairman work on my saxophone. The passion was clearly there, and he was always getting really neat saxophones into his shop.

He got saxophones in from around the world, and did a full restoration on a full set of original horns made by Adolphe Sax.

https://www.barnardrepair.com/projects#/the-adolphe-sax-fami...

[analog31]

That's amazing. One thing worth noting is that instrument designs evolved to be repairable, even if repair required specialized materials and techniques. For instance the old fashioned hide glue, basically a form of gelatin, is still the only acceptable glue for string instruments except under some extreme circumstances.

Had they been made with modern adhesives, the Stradivarius violins would have been firewood in a generation.