
If you play the saxophone or just enjoy seeing how amazing things are made you’re going to love watching this entire video. I recently visited the Selmer Factory in Mantes-la-Ville just outside of Paris, France where they have been making some of the world’s finest musical instruments for over a century.
In this video, you’re going to come along on a fascinating journey where we see how raw materials are transformed into beautiful music making tools using a mixture of the latest modern technology as well as traditional hand craftsmanship.
You may have seen my recent video where I toured the Yanagisawa saxophone Factory in Tokyo Japan. One thing that they have in common is both factories are located in residential neighborhoods I was quite surprised to see how different the rest of the saxophone making process can be though. This year I also had the opportunity to visit the Yamaha saxophone Factory in Hamamatsu, Japan and guess what? It’s a strikingly different process there as well.
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Raw Materials to Beautiful Instruments
Florent Milhaud, the Saxophone Product Manager for Selmer Paris, shows us around the process of making a saxophone. It begins with sheets of raw brass which is stored in a room where they store all the raw materials for making the various parts of a saxophone from scratch. A high-tech laser cutter precisely cuts out the shapes needed for each part, kind of like a cookie cutter but for brass. These shapes will become the body tube, bow, and bell.
It is very interesting to note that this shape has remained consistent all Selmer saxophones. The body tubes have the same interior shape and volume going back at least as far as the Balanced Action from the 1940s. The fundamental differences from one model to the next are in the necks, bows, and bells, as well as the tone hole placement and tone hole chimneys.
Shaping Saxophone Bells
Alto and tenor saxophone bells start out as a sheet of brass which gets pressed into a mold by a huge machine. The two bell halves are cut from the mold and then fused together using Argon gas rather than traditional Silver solder. Selmer says this special process preserves the homogeneity of the metal.
The smaller end of the bell gets trimmed to its proper length. The next part of the process is fascinating and begins with liquid tin being cast into these rings of various diameters. The fused bell is then placed on a mandrel and the tin ring is pressed along the length of the bell creating the exact shape for each model saxophone.
Another important thing to point out is that all the main parts and components of the Selmer Axos saxophones, their entry-level professional model, are made in the Paris Factory. It’s the assembly that is done by their foreign partners. Very much the same as Selmer did with the legendary Mark VI which was often assembled at partner factories in the US and the UK. Ironically the Mark VI’s that were assembled in a foreign country are considered more valuable today than the ones that were made entirely in France.
Next, the bell flare is rolled over a brass ring in the same way it has been done for over a 100 years. A baritone sax bell is made from a single piece of brass that gets folded around its mold and soldered together. The final shaping of these has to be done by hand.
Selmer Paris is one of the few manufacturers of bass saxophones in the world. A bass sax bell is made in two sections that are also folded around and then welded. The bow is made in a similar fashion, two halves are soldered together. A lot of hand work goes into getting the the final shape just right.
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Creating All the Parts and Pulling Tone Holes
Unlike the body tubes each model of Selmer saxophone neck is unique. This is the part of the saxophone that creates its individual character. We start with a single sheet of brass that gets folded into a tube and soldered together. The straight tubes then need to be bent and frozen water on the inside of the tubes makes it easier to bend.
Unlike the saxophone bells which get finished from the outside, the necks are placed into a mold and liquid is then blasted inside at high pressure giving them their final shape from the inside out.
Body tubes are also made from a single sheet of brass which gets folded in this machine. Once the tube gets soldered together, it’s time to cut holes in it, which is done by a very large modern and sophisticated machine. Tone holes used to be cut as circles and then the chimneys would be soldered onto the body. In 1922, Selmer was the first manufacturer to use the technique of pulling tone holes on saxophones.
Here’s how it works. Half sphere shapes are first placed inside this mandrel, then the body tube is put in position on top of the mandrel and a machine pulls them through the oval-shaped cutouts, which results in a perfectly circular tone hole chimney.
Once the large components of the saxophone are made, it’s time to start attaching a lot of small parts, all of which are made in this factory. These huge rolls of sheet brass are fed into this high-tech machine which cuts out countless small pieces. Small parts like pivot screws, hinge rods, and body posts are also made here by the thousands.
Saxophone Assembly
Next up is assembly. Every Selmer saxophone has been made in this Factory since day one. The complex key mechanism of a saxophone is fixed in place using key posts. A machine zaps the posts with an electrical charge which holds them in place temporarily so that they can be more easily soldered to the body. Solder is then used to attach the parts to the saxophone body. The bells and bows get soldered together here as well.
Once the posts are attached, the alignment is fine-tuned. The soldering process discolors the metal quite a bit, so everything needs to get cleaned up and that is done using a series of chemical baths. If you look closely at a saxophone you may notice that there are a lot of small moving parts. Each one is unique to the model, and they are all made here at the factory. There are hundreds of different small brass mechanisms that need to be worked by hand to get that “smooth to the touch” finish.
In another part of the factory, keys are made using machines that have been in service for Generations. Large machines with vibrating baths of corn and resin polish all the parts. The keys go in and get a nice first stage of polishing. Next, they are polished by hand. After that, the lacquer is applied. A room with hooks carries the parts through the lacquering room on a hanging conveyor belt, and the lacquer gets sprayed on with spray guns.
A Unique blend of Tradition and Technology
Next up is the engraving. If you’ve seen modern Selmer saxophones, you may have wondered how they get such intricate designs in engraved on their instruments in minute detail. Well here’s your answer: these high-tech engraving robots can work around the clock and never get tendonitis.
There’s another futuristic robot that performs multiple operations on each saxophone for a perfect key fit. This machine first measures the exact distance between the key posts and then trims off a precise amount of metal from each key then it levels and files down each tone hole to its ideal height. Then the lacquered and engraved saxophone parts are ready for assembly.
Needle springs are installed and pads are glued into their key cups using shellac. Selmer has the exact dose of shellac for each key prepared in these ready to use discs. First, the keys get heated up. A worker will then lift the pad up to ensure that the shellac has melted and spread across the key cup evenly. The pad gets held in place while the metal cools. The final assembly takes place at several stations.
Once the saxophone has been fully, assembled set up, and adjusted, there are several play testers who verify that everything works as it should. The final stop on our tour is the shipping room where finished Selmer saxophones get put in a case along with their included accessories and then boxed up ready to be delivered to distributors and dealers around the world.
Separating Fact from Fiction
Selmer is a legendary company that has been making extraordinary instruments for over a century along with that Legend though there comes a certain amount of rumors and hearsay that aren’t based in facts. I hope what we’ve shown here has helped saxophone enthusiasts understand what actually goes into making a Selmer saxophone.
The mixture of cutting edge technology and old world manual craftsmanship is striking, and at the same time exciting to see. I learned a tremendous amount making this video and I hope you did too watching it. Now, you’ve got to go here and check out how they make saxophones in Japan. You may be as surprised as I was to see how different the process can be.
One Comment
so cool