I hadn't owned a tenor for some years but I bought the Selmer second hand in Paris in 1993 - serial number suggests it was made in 1988 - and I got a very nice letter from Henri Selmer confirming that. I presume it then still had the original pads and I played it successfully (sort of) until a year ago when couple of pads got iffy and I bit the bullet and had it completely overhauled and repadded. The pads are the best my Hong Kong tech guy could source (from Rome) and it's played like a dream since, with no problems with humidity that I'm aware of (if you're a guitar player here, it's a whole different problem!) I also replaced the neck. The sax is black enamel with gold keys - looks fantastic - but the previous owner had sanded off all the lacquer on the neck - not very skillfully - and it look pretty ordinary by comparison with the body. Plus I always had difficult tuning across the octaves - thus if low A was in tune top A would be flat and vice versa. So I sported for a Steve Goodison neck (in gold) and it has been fantastic. I know he gets a dubious press in some other forums but the neck looks good and - more importantly - has fixed my tuning problem. Sorry to drone on John but I was in the zone!