As I tell myself "Try to resist ... No need to repond... Oh, okay, I can't stand it..."
I, for one, am convinced that the Olds Super was not an Olds design, but was at least based on Martin's Handcraft Committee II. Sarge at worldwidesax.com has stated the same based on his observations.
I've compared the body tubes and keys from a Super with those from my Comm II and it is obvious to me that the Olds was made by Martin machinery. The posts are identical in every dimension. The body tubes, tone hole diameters and placement are the same. The tear-drop touches on the palm keys are the same. The LH pinky touches are identical. Heck, the G#, C#, B and Bb keys are identical. I'm willing to accept that Olds bought or copied Martin's machinery to make the Super. It is even easier to accept that Olds might have bought the majority of the parts from Martin and then customized them with the cool key cups and key guards. No matter what Olds did, the Super is a Martin design in my book.
Well, it is late for me. Sorry for sticking my head into this thread so much. Forgive me. Good night all!
I tried hard not to reply...but cannot help it.
No apologies necessary.....your input is appreciated.
Jorns...I certainly believe, if you say so, that you have had Ambassadors which were Indiana stencils. However, the horns which I linked to above...are 100% certainly Martin Handcrafts with minor keywork simplification.
I know this....the same way YOU know this. Because I literally took calipers to a Martin Imperial Handcraft side-by-side with an Olds Ambassador (the one pictured above), and they were the same horns, with the exception of maybe 25% of the keywork. It wasn't an Indiana. It was a Handcraft Imperial. There is no mistaking a Handcraft Imperial for an Indiana.
I spent hours doing this. Most of the dang keys were interchangeable.....I have had about a half-dozen Ambassadors of this kind thru here...and they were all of the same design.
Clearly, the 2 horns in the catalog above are not of the same design, and the Studio model matches the Saxophonium auction.... while the Ambassador model matches the saxes I link to in my pics. These certainly are not ALL Indianas.
I appreciate your findings as well, and do not write this to contradict...because your reply seems to indicate what
hr7 was saying, above...that HIS Ambassador also was an Indiana stencil, as it looked identical to the Studio of my initial post.
I buy that entirely....not very hard to believe that Olds may have used the Ambassador name on two different Martin stencil models.... before finally settling upon one being the Ambassador, and the other the Studio.
:grouphug:
Regarding the Super...all good points again, yes. All of this MAY very well be true, but (as has been posited in other threads on the subject of the Super)...this doesn't mean that these were made at the Martin facility.
THAT is the theory some people have posited. That Olds acquired the older Martin tooling, along with a few former workmen, and began in-house production, which was then interrupted by WWII (some feeling the Super vanished after WWII).
That the Super is a
tweaked Martin design is pretty well accepted (...by any of us oddballs who care !). As Bruce chimes in, it seeems to have pieces of this Martin, and of that.
It has also been discussed that, while many have noted the similarities....there are enough dissimilarities between a Super and a Martin model to make one wonder why Martin would actually create new tooling for what was essentially gonna be a subcontract job of ONE single model ....and never have those details appear again.
Interesting thoughts.... interesting questions....interesting observations....
....impossible to prove or disprove based solely upon one's observation/examination of similarities. To date, all one can do then is speculate one way or the other.
This is why when something pops up like that catalog, it just really writes some things in stone. I wish someone could dig up some printed mat'l on the Super. Until they do....
....so many questions, so few answers...
I find it interesting that VSG and Henry found a '57 catalog which clearly illustrates that BOTH the Studio-Indiana and the Ambassador-Handcraft existed in production, side-by-side. Particularly considering that, really, by '57.....the Handcraft Imperial design was hecka, hecka old-school ! It is tempting to say this lends some credence to the notion that Olds acquired the superceded Martin tooling (if one were inclined to speculate, of course....:|)
