Sorry to hear that about your sax. Ive had my share of eBay saxes and not 1 played as described Every one of them needed some tinkering done. It especially hard when your new to the sax. I’m lucky enough to have a local music shop that works on saxes right where I live. It’s a small town local music store and the owner is a sax player!! Bonus.
Not sure where your from but do you have any music stores around?? If not you may be stuck with Sam ash if that’s all that’s around. You definitely want a working sax without leaks before starting to learn! A bad sax is a sure way to end your journey quickly. Good luck!!
I live in a small town in the middle of Kansas and I too struggle with finding “sax shops”. What I have done is find a good music store and talk to the tech. Most of the time the school district or college university will have a shop they take their instruments to and that is a good place to start. I have had an alto completely gone through about 2 years ago and it ran about $400.00. Not cheap but considering my options I did not have much choice. If you only have a few pads leaking you might get by a lot cheaper. Good luck.
I just found a repair shop that’s not too far away. I’m going to try to bring it there this Saturday. They give free estimates which is good. I was told by a friend that it sounds like a couple of the pads leak and that the upper register doesn’t work. It’s gotta get fixed before I can play it, so I’m going to try to just drop it off this Saturday.
Mark