Yes: on your F#, "the one on the left," you can see the pad kind of rock back and forth (forward/backward) as you release it after pressing down more firmly. As you already know, now, I think, it freezes after that movement in a way that consistently produces a leak at the front of the pad, because the pad is rocked backward in the cup, with the back end lower (this is why I thought it was probably a result of the pad freezing in place after a bounce -- if it was just caused by the front & back surfaces of the pad releasing from the tonehole, I would expect the pad to end up tipped the opposite way, since probably as the front/back ends release there is more pressure at the back, and the back may even in effect release 2nd).
That's very cool that you solved the seating issue (in a controlled situation). What your F looks like in the "after" is how a pad should look, at the front, closing, and how they look before the "press harder" segment, when both are closing, is how they should look at the front, in tandem.
I understand, playing back to myself, memories of the Codera B&S days, why this idea appeals to non-techs so much. When the Coderas were for sale at WWBW, and I was still playing a Bundy ii, everything about seeking repair was uncomfortable -- cost, trust, need, ability to have needs met, etc. etc. etc.. Even today, I'm teaching myself to reface because it is turning out it's more likely that I can satisfy my own particular mouthpiece needs/wants myself, by learning to reface, than to ever be able to hire somebody to do it.
Saxophone techs don't stress over repair. That kind of leaves the appeal as a question of practicality.
It's really cool you got to this point.
Now your only challenges are:
- sound / response from the player's perspective
- the realities of saxophone repair as they exist now (as far as the commercial viability of the idea) -- internet experts may think that all techs know that toneholes should be level and that in fact they are, because that is a recognized consensus norm and standard in web discussion. Everybody knows a tonehole should be flat and a cup and pad surface should ideally be flat and in perfect adjustment to hit flat against each other. The reality is, for your saxophone's performance, the pad and tonehole surfaces don't have to be perfectly flat; they just have to hit at the same time around the circumference of the tonehole (even if that is not flat, at both surfaces, it will feel like it is so long as the hole pad circle is hitting the whole tonehole at the same time -- and more, the horn will sing the same way). The reality is, rarely when a saxophone comes in for service are all (or sometimes even *any*) of its toneholes level. Techs all know this.
There is a "whataboutism" response open here: "Well this pad will cause techs to have to live up to a higher/correct standard!" A more rational response would be: "Sheisse, and you haven't even mentioned manufacturing differences across models and brands."
I totally get it what a remarkable accomplishment it is for a layperson (non-tech) to do what you've already done here. I get all of it: your brain working on problems whether you like it or not, even in dreams and in between dreams when you wake at night. But none of that is very related to most of the things that are separate from just the technical project you have in your mind.
The questions of practicality are mostly bad news, covered by some of the earlier remarks that I don't believe were at all ill intended (they are just in line with reality).
I do kind of think that a "resoblade" pad solution might be more feasible/practical than it was 20 years ago, because the overall level/mean-standard of repair is higher (as it is in any technical activity) today, thanks to the internet.
I don't see that it's really practical. There is no desire on either side in that, it's just an informed opinion, not very different from those that came before. I do see that you want these questions answered, just perhaps not with the answers that are actually accurate (LOL -- a laugh with, not at).
I didn't want to say this previously, as I did to you privately, but part of the issue is that most players don't like how the horns that have these set-ups in them feel to play (how they "sound" in particular). I think most techs who have been around for 10 or 15 years or more know this. Some players like how Jim Schmidt's pads feel and respond ("some," very different from saying majority, or even "many"). Very few like how they feel and sound, overall, to play, or if they do they eventually go back to preferring leather/conventional again, later. I have been asked a couple of times -- I don't think more than 3 -- in the last 20 years to put Jim Schmidt pads in horns. I cannot remember whether I ever did, but if I did it was over 15 years ago. I have probably worked on or played around 3-5 that had full installations in them, and again that was like 15 or 20 years ago, when his pads had some IRL and internet attention on them. I think everything "new" and "different" had a lot of attention on it around that time, because with the advent of the internet it was neato to be able to become aware of things that one wasn't aware of previously, and probably wouldn't have become aware of previous to the internet's existence.
It's a cool idea, but some of what seems like curmudgeonly resistance is sort of annoyance at the difficulty (on the part of techs) to impart to you all of the stuff that this project brings up, when most of it is unwelcome, despite being completely factually based.
I don't think commercial viability has a lot to do with how cool "resoblades" were 15 or 20 years ago, and it really doesn't today.
But, if you were an artist/player and had the best possible conventional set-up in your horn, versus the best possible "resoblade" (as they have existed in any related form -- thin, rubber/synthetic pads that either are discs or sort of solid rubber), which would you choose? Well, many have already chosen. The numbers tell the story. Techs have already seen that across large "data sets." Again, that does not detract in any way from how cool a project yours is, or that how players have chosen in the past might be different if some changes were to be in place.
As far as commercial viability, though, there are an awful lot of things that have to change.