Factory Tour-P.Mauriat Saxophone


General Tone Holes

The tone holes are drawn from the body tube through an oval shaped hole, already stamped in the body before the drawing process. Each tone hole is drawn from the inside of the body tube out using a "die" that creates the size and shape of that tone hole. The mandrel that the body is placed on in order to create these tone holes, already has the dies inside the mandrel and the operator of the milling machine has a threaded bit that he feeds into the die through the tone hole in the body. He then he draws or pulls the die out with the rotating head of the milling machine, one tone hole at a time. After that the tops of the tone holes are leveled with a high speed cutting tool on a separate milling machine designed to level the tone holes.

Rolled Tone Holes

In the case of the rolled tone hole saxophones, the top of the tone holes are cut and leveled before the process of rolling takes place. There is another die or form which goes over each tone hole and is hand pressed onto the top of the hole while the head of the milling machine is rotating. This form rolls the edge of the tone to the outside to a certain preset depth. These are true rolled tone holes, rolled out of the existing tone hole metal, not soldered on. This painstaking process is also done one tone hole at a time.