Please note: I am currently booked solid for the foreseeable future, and am only taking work from previous clients.
Hi! Thank you for visiting. I am a one-man shop and lucky to be very busy, so please read this whole page before contacting me so we can have an optimal experience working together.
I am lucky to have very limited availability, and often a wait list. The kinds of horns I specialize in and have experience with are vintage/collectible/professional level saxophones, including the unusual and rare*. This is where my experience lies, and therefore where I am of the best use– especially because there can be limited options for experienced repairers if you have a horn off of the beaten path. If you have a modern Taiwanese horn, or an intermediate level instrument, or even a modern Selmer, there are people who have a lot more experience with those than I do and would likely do the job better. For what is involved when I overhaul a saxophone, please see my repair page.
*This is just the kind of work that has come to me over time, starting mostly through luck and where I happened to spend my early years in the trade. As time went on, based on my reputation, vintage and rare continued to be what people would bring to me. Now 20 years into the business, this is the vast majority of my experience and therefore what I seem to be best at.
I VASTLY PREFER PHONE CALLS. Email requires me to use my hands to answer, and I work with my hands. For phone calls, I typically am in the shop and can answer the phone between 10am-3pm EST Monday through Friday. Leave a message if I don’t pick up and I will get back to you. If you do send an email, include a phone number in it to increase your chances of a timely response from me, and if I respond through email, please don’t be offended if my response seems curt/clipped- it was simply in the interest of time and trying to get back to you sooner.
I do not have a physical store, and my repair shop is private and by appointment only. I work from my home in the countryside outside Durham, North Carolina USA, and I do ship internationally.
If you’ve bought a sax elsewhere and want me to take a look at photos to see if you got a decent deal, sorry, I can’t help you. It takes about an hour for me to evaluate a saxophone based on photos alone- if the photos are even good enough and usually they aren’t- and the results are not guaranteed anyways. I get asked 5-10 times per week, and I simply don’t have that much time to give away for free. If you want to pay me my shop hourly rate AND you’ve got tons of super great photos, I can give you an opinion but frankly you’d be better off taking it somewhere in person for an examination if you have the ability.
Phone: 919-901-1191. (Please note I am not currently accepting any new clients.) Best for questions. No texts at this number. Leave a message if I can’t pick up. Please don’t call repeatedly and not leave a message. My hands are busy most of the time, and I won’t call back without a message- often times I can answer a question in your voicemail if you are not available when I take a break from bench work to call back, rather than play phone tag.
Email: stohrermusic@gmail.com This is the best way to reach me if you have something you want me to remember (by way of searching for it in the future) or refer to in the future. I also like seeing pictures of cool, rare, unusual saxophones and learning new things.