Keystone Music and Repair

Name: Keystone Music and Repair
Address: South Keim Street, Pottstown, PA, 19465, US
Telephone: +14849859559

Home
United States
Pottstown, PA
Keystone Music and Repair

Offering comprehensive woodwind and brass repairs in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Please call or email for an appointment. He is an active oboe/english horn player.

Keystone Music Repair is an independent brass and woodwind repair shop located in Pottstown PA (North Coventry Township), convenient to Chester, Montgomery, and Berks Counties. As a repair-only shop, we are able to focus on turning out the highest quality work, but can also offer recommendations for where to purchase new/used instruments and accessories. Please call or email for an appointment.

-Performing all manner of repairs to all brass and woodwind instruments, with specialized skills in double reeds
-Modifications and custom parts manufacture available
-Free estimates on all work, excellent customer communication, and straightforward answers to all your instrument-related questions

John Kirkner is a professional instrument repair technician who studied at Minnesota State College-Southeast Technical in Red Wing, MN.

03/18/2026

Here's a cute lil' tunable leadpipe I made for that cute lil' Eb cornet that tried to kill me a few weeks ago. The original removable leadpipe went missing in ages past. The owner provided pics of an original leadpipe from a similar instrument, and from that I was able to get some rough dimensions. I ordered some appropriately sized telescoping tube, mocked something up to test the intonation, then put it all together. The tuning mechanism uses some handmade posts along with the threaded rod and nut from a Bach trumpet 3rd slide stop rod.
The whole cornet is finished now (2nd pic), after I had to rebuild most of the solder joints and manufacture some new tubes and ferrules to replace originals that had split. It also got a good thorough cleaning, then another cleaning after all of that soldering. Now that it doesn't leak like a sieve and has the correct length of tubing between the mouthpiece and bell, it plays shockingly well.

01/01/2026

Here's a fun one for New Year's Eve.
M has been very into the American Girls books, and has several of the dolls, many inherited from her mom. But lately she's been into Kit, whom she didn't have in doll form. Fortunately, Santa found a gently loved Kit doll who was ready for a new home, but she was missing a couple of buttons from her sweater. Santa sent her to us ahead of time for a glow-up, but we couldn't order new buttons in time for Christmas. Turns out Allied Supply saxophone pearls are the right thickness and color to make replacements, they just needed a little customization.
After I turned them to the right diameter, I used a ball end mill to make the concave face, polished them smooth, then drilled the thread holes in the mill. Looking pretty great, Kit!
Incidentally, if I'd charged my regular labor and parts rates for this work, these buttons would probably be the most expensive accessory any member of our household has on any piece of clothing.
Happy New Year, everyone.

12/28/2025

Working on a one-handed saxophone, and the most harrowing part of these projects is having to braze a second post ball onto this post. The heat required to braze the ball is easily enough to release the solder that holds the post onto the body of the instrument. I got around that by working quickly (which minimizes the amount of heat that can transfer through the post to the body) and by stuffing a wet cloth into the body right under the post. The water in the cloth (in this case, a sock) can absorb a lot of heat, which keeps the body (and the solder joint) below the temperature at which the solder would flow.

I place a scrap piece of steel rod through the post to keep it aligned (just in case the joint were to come loose) and align the post ball with a piece of brass rod that's threaded on both ends. This picture shows how it looks after a lot of clean up and lacquering.

12/26/2025

Happy Christmas, everyone.
I see that this is my fourth post in 2025. Probably indicative of a pretty poor social media strategy for my business, but at least the bar is set low for 2026. I may squeeze in another post or two over the next week, I've had a few fun projects lately.
I always spend Christmas Eve doing some cleaning and organizing in the shop, then take off for the week between so I can start the new year fresh. Hope you get to spend some time with people you love in this last week of the year.

11/05/2025

Brazing an arm onto an english horn F key, so I can add a left F mechanism.
When I've had success brazing, it's because I focus on three details.

Rigidity: ensure that parts are positioned properly and that they won't move, which can be tricky since parts expand and may want to shift when heated. I use a lot of different fixtures and holders depending on the part. In this case a titanium soldering clip, shaped and bent to hold this specific part, worked perfectly.

Speed: get in and out in 15-30 seconds. From the moment the flame first touched this key to the moment it was pulled away is about 20 seconds. Heating more gradually or for a longer time will allow the heat to dissipate through the part, which may cause other joints to get hot enough to fall apart, especially on a small key like this one. Longer heating times are also more likely to damage plating, though I think this key was sterling silver.

Feed: introduce the solder into the joint from one point, and only after the entire joint has reached its flow temperature, so that the solder "flashes" in to fill the entire joint at once. Introducing solder too early can cause it to flow on to the hotter part, and not into the joint. I like using picks to control the amount of solder. In this case my "blob" was a little too big, so it filled the joint with a little bit extra pooled around the edges. Not a big deal on the underside of a key where it can't be seen, but that would have been unacceptable on a more visible joint.

!

07/04/2025

Happy Byron Ford's birthday to all.
This is the fifth year I've hosted a calendar of Southeast PA Community Band performances on my website (link in bio). There are about 90 performances remaining in the summer season, between now and Labor Day, and today is always the busiest day of the summer, with 11 performances. If you're looking for something to do in SE PA this evening, there are plenty of options, some with fireworks!
Celebrate however and whatever you choose today. It could be a friend's birthday, it could be your spouse's retirement from the Navy band, it could be that you like seeing dogs stressed out by explosions. Maybe you want to celebrate a time when leaders were willing to sacrifice their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor - or really do anything that wasn't purely driven by their personal interests - for the good of their nation. Can't think of much else worth celebrating today.

04/10/2025

Haven't posted in a while because all social media is awful soul- and society-eroding garbage. But here's a fun side-by-side, and a strong visual argument for why you should call a tech if your swab becomes stuck.

At top is an oboe that had a stuck swab (see that knot at the right of the picture?) As soon as it happened, the player stopped pulling on the swab and had her dad text me. He brought it to the shop the next morning and I was able to extract it. Total time: 9 minutes.

The piccolo at bottom had a stuck cleaning rod. It was extracted...somehow...by someone, who managed to split the body through four tone holes in the process. Some glue was spread over the cracks, though not in any way that sealed the crack or gave the pads a smooth, level surface to seat against. It seemed to be more of an expensive aesthetic statement. I had to remove the glue, realign the sides of the crack, reglue and dress the surface, fill in some interior damage to the bore, then mill out and install bushings in all four tone holes, and replace the corresponding pads. Swipe to see some pics of that process. Total time: 6.25 hours

Guess which one I didn't charge for?

12/26/2024

It broke after the first flight 😭
Fortunately, her dad knows a little bit about fixing cracks in wood. Even touched up the logo!
Happy everything to everyone and cheers to the end of the year!
?

11/21/2024

First time doing a socket graft! I had to make a cutter for the tone hole, and bought an exact size reamer to enlarge the hole, but now I'll be ready for next time. Swipe to see the process of turning down the top of the joint to receive the graft, installing the graft, and recutting the tone hole. The most harrowing part was getting things aligned before cutting the tone hole, but my set-up worked and everything lined up perfectly. I didn't even have to replace the pad. This one is going back up the road to the local middle school, and it never had to leave its zip code to get fixed!
Credit to my daughter, who came out to the shop while I was working on this and was eager to help. She's an excellent assistant.

10/15/2024

Thrilling-repair-weekend-recap-in-reverse continues with Saturday. We hosted one of the largest regional clinics in NAPBIRT history - 26 in-person attendees, plus 11 online. This was NAPBIRT'S first time trying a live simulcast of an in-person clinic, and it went really well, despite having my technologically-impaired fingers at the controls. All four presenters at the clinic were outstanding. .by.katie talked about higher-level flute repairs, gave tips on improving communication between technicians and musicians, discussed lacquering for shops without a dedicated lacquer setup (and flew all the way in from St. Paul), and Frank Saam taught us about basic orchestral string repairs. Pulling off one of these events successfully requires a huge amount of time and energy from multiple people, all given with no compensation, for the benefit of our colleagues. Thank you to everyone who stepped up. Extra thanks to the aforementioned Katie and for organizing and hosting. Bonus thanks to for providing an apocalyptic number of soft pretzels that kept us fueled late into the evening.
I was excited to catch up with Noah from Cayuga Music Shop, who spent a few days in my shop over the summer learning about oboe repairs (and teaching me a few things). And I treasure any chance to see any members of the Best Friends Gang.

Address

South Keim Street
Pottstown, PA
19465

Telephone

+14849859559

Website

http://www.keystonemusicrepair.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Keystone Music and Repair posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Keystone Music and Repair:

Shortcuts

Want your business to be the top-listed Shop in Pottstown?