Klarinet Archive - Posting 000496.txt from 1995/12

From: Bill Fogle <bfogle@-----.EDU>
Subj: Swing Era Selmer
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 1995 10:51:00 -0500

> If indeed there is someone out there looking up the manufacturing dates
> of old Selmer clarinets, I am not going to be shy:
>
> Henri Selmer
> Paris
> FRANCE
>
> serial number: L 6911
I guess you received the date (1936) already. You might like to know that
in The Clarinet for spring 1955 there is a request for anybody who has
Selmer L3682 to loan it back to Benny Goodman (who offers a 500dollar
Selmer Omega in exchange for a 3 week loan!). It seems that this is the
instrument Goodman used for many of his old recordings, and then traded it
but coulnd't remember where. So maybe yours is in a good series.

My impression about the clarinet I have is that it could not have been very
valuable. If it was made in 1936 it should have been a regular Boehm in
order to have been of top quality---no? The horn I have is a strange
hybrid. Not a "real" Albert but certainly not a Boehm clarinet. I do value
it myself because of its age. At the time i bought it I was shopping in New
York for an Albert system or German system clarinet. I had "gotten it into
my head" that these instruments were more resonant (which indeed they might
be). I found this horn, which at $450 was more in line with my budget than
the real live Albert clarinet I had seen a bit earlier for $600. Sometimes
I wish I had bought the Albert.