In the process for joining metallic coated connector pins (20) to a multilayer ceramic substrate (10), contact areas on the substrate are formed by sequential coatings of molybdenum (12) and nickel (14), which are heated to diffuse the nickel. A pure gold paste is applied by screen printing, for example, followed by the step of firing to burn out the paste binder and to sinter the pure gold particles onto a dense low porosity structure. The sintering operation converts the Ni film (14) into a continuous Au-Ni solid solution. During pin braze, Ni-Sn intermetallics are dispersed in a gold rich matrix of the Au-Ni solid solution.