Klarinet Archive - Posting 000232.txt from 1996/01

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re the Selmer Model 33 Bass
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 09:55:21 -0500

Adding a small point to David Hattner's excellent description of
visual aspects of the model 33 bass and other (and later) Selmer
bass clarinets, I note the following: for the first two or three
years of making the model 33 bass (ca. 1960 and then only on
special order), the three thumb keys were rounded. Sometime around
1970 they were made flat. It was simply a cosmetic change, but it
was a visual one which is the point that David was addressing. These
three thumb keys had rollers added to them by Yamaha but, as long
as Selmer made the three-thumb-key model, I do not believe that they
added rollers. Had they, my life would have been a lot easier in
several pieces.

At the time I bought my low C bass - and I was living in Paris at the
time - one went to Selmer and requested one which was then made;
i.e., unlike their other instruments for which they had 80 different
samples on the shelf at the Paris store, the low C bass (and the basset
horn too) had a lengthy waiting period. The earliest modests (of which
mine is one) had the right hand joint made of two separate pieces of
wood: one piece was from a regular low E-flat b.c., and then there
was an extension which was affixed in such an elegant way that it took
some time to verify that the two pieces of wood were indeed separate.

====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
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