www.sax.fora.pl

mirek

Interesting Selmer Information from Jerome Selmer

I attended a clinic where the Director General and head of Research and Development of Selmer (Paris) Jerome Selmer gave a historical presentation and graciously and patiently answered questions from the audience of saxophone repairmen (and one Taiwan-based competitor) for nearly two hours. Some interesting things he mentioned:

– The Mark VI and Reference horns are 66/34 alloy brass (note: common trade name for this alloy is “yellow brass”)
– The S80 is 70/30 alloy brass (note: common trade name for this alloy is “cartridge brass”)
– The S80II and Reference horns share body tubes and bows, but have different necks and bells
– The S80III differs from the S80II in neck and upper body taper (as well as some tonehole placement), bell and bow are the same
– The Jubilee horns have toneholes that are .2mm taller (about .007 inches, or the thickness of an 3×5 index card)
– The bells on most horns (except special editions and baritone/bass) are not hand hammered anymore because the workers kept getting wrist injuries
– Toneholes are made by mounting the body on a mandrel and cutting the hole by CNC machine, but the toneholes are pulled with a mechanical device controlled by a worker
– The body and neck seams used to be brazed, now they are welded
– The necks are straight cones, filled with ice and bent by hand (I would have expected hydroforming! I was surprised to hear this, and I am kind of blown away it is just a straight cone)
– They may eventually move to machine engraving, and a few S80 horns are already in circulation that have early experiments with machine engraving
– Until the 1970s, none of the knowledge on how to build was written down- it was all in the heads of the workers, and passed on from one generation to the next
– The R&D department is already working on the next Selmer model- and the eventual goal is to have one model of saxophone across the board (like back in the day)
– The R&D department is working on an acoustic reference blueprint of “the Selmer sound”- a waveform they can strive for when designing new horns
– The R&D department has the top technicians in the company and can prototype a new instrument in about 15 days

Teddy

Knock out dla polskich, nieanglojęzycznych serwisów?
translare.google.com nie przetłumaczy R&D...

mirek

Kto by pomyślał, że S80II i Reference ma to samo body i bow.... albo, że do lat 70 selmer nigdy nie zapisywał to jak budować saksofony. Wszystko było przekazywane ustnie z pokolenia na pokolenie....