In the past few months I have seen tenor necks with the brace shown on a number of saxes on Ebay. Most recently, on a couple of Martins. Are these braces original, or are they a common type of brace that might be added by a tech at the owner's request?
The materials and manufacture look original but much depends on which neck we are talking about. A technician could have easily used a brace meant for a certain brand on a different brand.
Braces like this were common for example on SML.
But the Martin Handcraft DOES indeed appear to have an original brace of a similar design so I think that you are looking at an original feature for this model.
well, you had to look, specifically at the Handcraft series, the earlier ones have a round wire brace the later ones have a flat one, as illustrated above and clearly shown in the catalogue.
I checked back on these recently expired listings with the demonstrated neck braces, and they were for Comm I and Comm II tenors. So I guess they are not original to these horns, but work OK?
That is the site that I started on, and under Comm I tenor, pictures in the first two rows that show necks with the brace. But all of the remaining rows show necks without braces. Also the pics with the brace show the octave key shape that agrees with my photo, but the other pics without braces show a more contoured shape to the key. It looks like maybe they had some models with more than one neck used during the model run.
Martins, especially, have a lot of minor mechanical variations. Neck braces are only part of it. I would assume any neck and brace that look factory made are original unless there's evidence to the contrary. Very few people bother with changing or modifying neck braces.
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