Gerald Corey's Pfeifer profiler, restored

I'm listing some of the restoration projects I've done in the past year or so since I retired from the Houston Symphony.

For starters, here's an historic Pfeifer profiler that belonged to Gerald Corey, who many of you may know was one of the founders of the IDRS with his publication of To the World's Bassoonists back in the 60s.

Before:

Joelle Amar sent this machine to me that she got from Jerry some time ago. It needed a thorough cleaning, lubricating and adjustments to get working again. I was barely able to move the carriage from dried oil residue. The blade was very worn so needed resharpening. Also the cane cane clamps were missing. We ordered a new set of them and a new blade from Maine Tool Room. The new clamps are in the upper right hand corner of this photo. There is a custom tip template on this machine which is stamped into it which reads LS11. My experience with the Pfeifer tip templates includes a set I bought from Mr. Pfeifer back in the late 70s for my own Pfeifer for the purpose of having a secondary taper in the front third of the reed's blade. Pfeifer made (as far as I know) 10 different sloped templates from 1-10 with 10 having the most taper. I list the specs for these in the appendix of my book (sorry for the shameless plug of the book—). This must have been an even more radical tip taper that Lou Skinner asked Pfeifer to make for him.

Here's a photo of the finished restoration.

After:

Since I had used a Pfeifer single profiler for many years I was familiar with the setting up and adjusting of it. It was a real privilege to work on Gerald Corey's machine for me. Corey was principal bassoon in the Baltimore Symphony when I was growing up just outside of Washington, D.C. in the mid 1960s and I was a high school subscriber of his newsletter for bassoonists: To the World's Bassoonists.