There are many of us who don't think anything WAS wrong with the old layout (Conn, Martin, Buescher up to the 400, and King up to about halfway through the Super 20 run).
The THEORY (and the French are great ones for doing things according to theory) is that because all your other LH fingers close the keys by clamping in (like squeezing a ball), the little finger should do the same. Unfortunately designing the LH keywork according to this theory leads to some issues.
For one thing, Sax assigned to the LH little finger some of the heaviest work on the horn. We can argue that it should be a stronger more flexible finger that does those bell keys (like, say, the right thumb), but that decision's made. In the original Sax design, that was carried over till the Selmer Balanced Action, the LH little finger actually PUSHES on the keys, so it's being worked in a very strong direction, along its axis. Furthermore, to go from one key to the next requires only that the finger be pivoted about its big knuckle.
Now if we look at the Selmer-style LH little finger keys, we see that their angle to the little finger is very different. Where the old style has the key surfaces nearly perpendicular to the axis of the finger, the Selmer style has the key surfaces nearly parallel to the finger's axis. in THEORY, then, the action of the finger in closing the key will be similar to the action of all the other fingers. However, in REALITY there are a few issues.
1) Because the C# key is closer to the knuckle than the B key, and the key surfaces are nearly parallel to the finger, your little finger has to get longer to play the B and shorter to play the C#. Now if you've got great big long fingers, you simply change the curvature of the finger, but if you don't, you end up having to wiggle your whole hand around to go between these two keys. And it's basically impossible for someone with short fingers to avoid opening the C# key while playing B, which is why all the Selmers have that extra "helper arm" to force the C# closed when B is played. Another thing to get out of adjustment.
2) Beyond this, Selmer retained the layout where the Bb is below the B/C# keys (as did several other makers that didn't do the left to right bell key swap). So, to go from C# or B to Bb, you have to SLIDE the little finger OUTWARD, in its very WEAKEST direction, while simultaneously applying a CLAMPing action with it. Basically you're asking a very weak muscle to overcome the friction being applied by a very strong muscle. Again, to actually make these movements, people end up having to engage the more powerful muscles of hte wrist and forearm, and their hands squirrel all over the place. Wih the superior Conn and late-Buescher layout of C#, B, Bb all in a line, moving from one to another is a matter of pivoting the finger about its big knuckle, which is using stronger muscles, and doesn't require you to hang that little finger way out there separated from the rest of its hand where it's weakest.
3) So now that they designed a layout that's difficult to actuate, they needed to bring down the key forces; so they lengthened the arms at the key touches. Which seems good, but when you increase mechanical advantage you increase travel too, so now instead of the short stiff keys of the Conn Buescher Martin and King layouts, you have long squishy keys with enormous travel.
4) And then to make matters worse, with all that key travel, they decide they need to make it easier to get back and forth from the low Bb, so they invent that horrible tilting low Bb that always falls away from your finger just when you need it to be stiff and positive in action. Plus it's another linkage, and with really short lever arms, so any compression of the padding material means the thing just sinks and sinks and sinks and "gee, have I closed the damn key YET????" is the reaction.
Honestly, the Selmer Balanced Action and later horns are wonderful instruments with great tone and excellent build quality, but the very worst aspect of the design is the Mark 6 and later little finger LH table. Then the Mark 7 took it even further by making all the keys 50% oversize! I knew one tenor player who played professionally at a very high level on a Mark 7; he was a great big bruiser of a guy with hands like a bunch of bananas; and even so, he had the tilting low Bb disabled and the key soldered in a fixed position rather than deal with that uncertain squishy action. The BA horns are in my opinion the best of the bunch BECAUSE they didn't have that horrible tilting linked low Bb.
But if you want to blow a Selmerite's mind, have them play a Super/Radio Improved/New Large Bore. All the great key action of a BA or M6 is there, AND the little finger action is light, positive, with short key travel. Just like a fine musical instrument, not like the shift linkage of a poorly maintained VW Microbus with all the bushings fallen out of the linkage.
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