Klarinet Archive - Posting 000189.txt from 2000/02

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] repair person in Eastern Virginia?
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 16:39:44 -0500

Fred Jacobowitz wrote,
>If you can get up to the DC area, Tony Valenti is suposed to be fabulous. I
think he is in Fairfax. I'm sure you can call information.>

Tony Valenti is in Alexandria. He did most of the difficult restoration on
my 1926 bass sax. He did a superb job and I highly recommend the quality of
his work. However, his shop is no longer listed in the Yellow Pages. I
don't have his phone number. Evidently he no longer works with the public
directly unless you "know somebody" who can get to him or you're one of his
regular customers.

Fair warning: These days, he can be *extremely* slow on a large-scale
project. He kept my bass sax for more than a year. Although the end result
was a superb piece of work on a sax that the previous owner had badly damaged
by dropping it, the creeping pace of the work, and the fact that I couldn't
talk with Tony Valenti directly and had to communicate with him through
someone else, proved rather frustrating. So if you need the work done *now*,
this probably is not the way to go.

My repairman is:

Peter Ferrante
Presto Brass and Woodwinds
2219 B North Columbia St., Suite 303
Arlington, Virginia 22207-2522
Phone: 703-841-8335

He is sometimes backed up, too (though not glacially slow like Valenti),
because he's popular and very busy with customers, but he has done excellent
restoration work for me on clarinets and smaller saxes, all "vintage". His
prices are about average for this area, he's a super-nice guy, he sends home
an instrument in fine working order and he respects the integrity of old
construction.

If anybody wants a solid but unexciting student quality King Cleveland
cornet, circa mid-1950s, in excellent condition, I've got one on consignment
with him. Somebody please go buy the dad-ratted thing so that I can get my
money back out of it! He's kept it for two years! And please tell him I
sent you!
;-)

Lelia

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