Vintage Selmer Bass Clarinet
MagJF
The age and condition are consistent with a 1927 manufacture date, which is
what the standard Selmer guides say. The wood is in good condition and the
keywork appears sound, but pads, springs, corks, etc. need replacement.
Two questions. First, I'd like a recommendation for a shop to restore the
instrument, preferably in the Mid-Atlantic region. Second, there aren't many
like it so I'm having trouble finding comparable sales. Any idea what the horn
might be worth once it's in playable condition? BTW, it only goes to low E; no
Eb key.
Thanks in advance,
John Magolan
Valley Forge PA
Gardner
shore? Or has a certain mythical island resurfaced?
HOST Comp Tanker
were still made (as they are again today). What you lose in the ability to
transpose A parts (and how often do most of us do much of that anymore?) and
"sonority" in the B in the staff are made up for in part by a lighter
instrument, both in weight (useful if you play off a strap or your thumb rather
than a peg) and in "feel" (it doesn't feel as "stuffy" when blowing into such
horns).
All this in light of my experience, of course. Back in the 1950's I started on
an old "Albert system" Buffet A bass horn left by my grandfather, who brought
all his horns over here after World War I. As he could only pawn the two
sopranos and the Bb bass, guess what was left in the closet when little Terry
wanted to take up music?
After "unlearning" my own special form of alternate notation (reading Bb parts
in light of the A horn's fingering, where the A fingering was given the Bb
name...what could be simpler, no?), I graduated to a student horn that a music
store was more than glad to trade for the artist level Buffet, even if it was
an old "Albert". The hand stretch wasn't as hard for a youngster, and my
reading skills could finally join the mainstream of music.
Then, when I was attending college for one dreadful year at "dreary" Drury in
Springfield MO back in the 1960's (and not in the music program, but playing
with their wind ensemble and the city orchestra), I was digging around in the
instrument room in the converted World War II classroom building that served
for a band hall. After shifting a powerful lot of marching band brass that had
gone unused for many years (they dumped their football program after a player
got killed on field back in the 1940's, or so the story went), I found a number
of interesting boxes.
Two of them were Selmer saxophones, a soprano and a sopranino, both still in
the poly bags in their virgin cases. I figured that they were put on a shelf
after purchase and then were "covered up" when somebody moved the marching
brass to get it out of the way. From the dust levels on the horn's cases, they
had to have been there for at least two years. Also, they weren't on the
inventory...
The other discovery was a Buffet bass clarinet in Bb, also of the Albert
system. It was about as old as the one I had cut my teeth on, but was in
deplorable mechanical shape, with rotted pads and some rusted up rods. And, it
too wasn't on the inventory.
I took the old horn on as a project, stripping and cleaning it up in my dorm
room until I had a bunch of keys and rods and bare wood that was well oiled
down through a soaked towel immersion, both inside and out. I did the corks,
and got a set of pads that were close enough from my young lady friend at the
local music store (Hoover Music, now shuttered). After getting them in place
close enough for the horn to work, I had my repair people up in Saint Louis set
it up over Thanksgiving break, and then entered musical bliss for the remainder
of my time down in the Queen City of the Ozarks.
The horn was wonderfully responsive with a Selmer C** mouthpiece, and it was no
strain at all to range up to high A (not that it was ever needed). The double
octave key setup (with two touchpieces to manually operate each key as needed)
wasn't any real trouble to get reaccustomed to, and the tone was wonderful, as
I have always found these older bass clarinets to be.
It was a pleasure to use compared to the old Kohler bass clarinets that were
the "modern" ones owned by the school...plus (with the Albert keywork) I didn't
have to worry about either of the two high school hacks that played in the
college band getting the Buffet out of adjustment.
Well, I used the Albert horn through a season with the city orchestra, plus a
couple of musicals at SMS and Drury and some big band work up in Saint Louis on
weekends, and had a great time. Coming up on the end of my one year sentence at
the place, I approached Dr. Don Verne Joseph (the jazz maven of the Ozarks)
with the suggestion that I take the relic off of the hands of the college for
some sort of monetary consideration. The answer, of course, was no.
(I should have just kept the thing, as they had no idea that it was theirs, and
it was non-standard enough to ensure that most players would never even touch
the thing. I was young then, and honest to a fault...)
I called them back in the late 1970's to see if it was still there, but it
apparently had gone to that great clarinet gathering in the sky. More probably
it's hung up on a wall somewhere, preserved for the novelty value rather than
for the fine playing horn that it was.
The moral of the story ("And, it's about time!", some may be saying at this
point) is that "old ain't always bad", and that you should try something
different once in a while. I've tried to find another Buffet through second
hand sources, and got close one time (the guy wanted me to buy it sight unseen,
something I'm just not willing to do with a six hundred dollar range woodwind
instrument that's a hundred years plus in age.
All in all, the Albert fingerings aren't that hard to deal with (the old Rubank
Elementary Method for Clarinet still has a fingering chart for the Albert
system); if you've ever played a saxophone, the switch won't bother you in the
least. And the "feel" of the horn will take you back to the early days of the
"simple" clarinet.
Terry L. Stibal
HOSTCom...@aol.com