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Saxophones Martin tenors

And the real world experience of tone holes becoming unsoldered, I suspect, is much less than people are afraid of.

In fact it's rather more common than people imagine.
Case in point. I recently worked on a Martin that had previously been 'overhauled'...and then serviced by a renowned repairer.
I found four dodgy toneholes.

It's not just that it's hard to see if the joints have been compromised, it's more that those who ought to know better aren't adequately testing them.
 
A complete clean tube. Everything wass removed. This was just out of curiosity. All techs, alt least many, says that silver soldered toneholes joints would solve Martin's bad toneholes joints (soft soldered). It was my freind (a former worker in the medical indystry sector, implants hipster, knees, ) that did the soldering. Bad results. Too much heat even on a "clean" tube.

Yeah, silver solder would solve the problem in the long term - but a decent refit with good-quality modern soft solder will likely give you a good 60-80 years of service life before they needed further attention. And if care was taken to properly dry the horn after playing you could probably double that figure.
I would imagine that Martin, quite reasonably, used the cheapest solder that was up the job.

And as Turf rightly pointed out, if you try to silver solder over soft solder - even if it's just a smear - it won't end well. You gotta go back to brass.
 
When I wrote "clean" I mean that all solderings were loosen. And the old soldering on the tube and tonering joint werer clean to bare brass. The solderd man told us it was not esy to silver solder the thick tone rings back on the relative thin sax tube, even if Martin is ragarded to be a thickwall body.

I don't know if MBIC, RMC or Wurlitzer used the cheapest solder? Or maybe they were forced to do so due to work environment legisaltion?
 
When I wrote "clean" I mean that all solderings were loosen. And the old soldering on the tube and tonering joint werer clean to bare brass. The solderd man told us it was not esy to silver solder the thick tone rings back on the relative thin sax tube, even if Martin is ragarded to be a thickwall body.

I don't know if MBIC, RMC or Wurlitzer used the cheapest solder? Or maybe they were forced to do so due to work environment legisaltion?
If you took the surfaces back to bare brass there shouldn't have been any problems.

It shouldn't be that hard to silver solder the toneholes on, no matter the thickness - it's simply a matter of getting everything up to the right temperature. And while the body is relatively thin compared to the toneholes, that too should present no problems....aside from the need to level the holes afterwards.

I wouldn't think their choice of solder came down to legislation - it's probably much more to do with the choice of alloy. Various metals can be added to the standard 60/40 tin/lead mix to improve flow, strength and longevity - and the proportions can vary. But that costs extra, and it's not exactly cheap to start with.
I can't even begin to calculate how much solder a company like Martin would get through in a typical year, but I bet if they could have saved a dollar on each roll of solder it would have added up to a very significant amount.
 
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