Klarinet Archive - Posting 000737.txt from 2003/10

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] to the Buffet Mafia
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 10:40:49 -0500

Sorry to revive a thread a week late, but I just got back from California.
While I was away, on October 20, Ken Wolman wrote,
>Anyone here ever played a Conn clarinet?

My experience agrees with what Walter Grabner wrote about his Conn
Director, which he described as "wretched" -- that was the first clarinet I
owned, too, in 1958. This is a later vintage than the pro-quality Conn
that Artie Shaw played. By 1958, Conn was no longer C. G. Conn. Respect
for the old brand name hadn't died yet, but in fact the company had stopped
making pro-quality clarinets by then (and the clarinets had never been as
generally accepted as the superb C. G. Conn saxophones from the 1920s and
1930s). To tell the difference between the era of higher-quality Conns and
the later era, look for the presence or absence of the initials, "C.G." To
preserve C. G. Conn's reputation and protect his memory from the taint of
any future association with inferior instruments, his widow refused to sell
the entire logo when she sold the company. She sold the "Conn" part of the
name but not the "C. G." that always went with it on the original company's
logo. I don't think that today's professional clarinet players accept any
of the Conns without the "C. G." as pro quality instruments.

My 1958 Conn Director, sold as an intermediate instrument, is made of
gorgeous wood that never cracked, despite very hard use from 1958 through
1966. At the time, it sounded much better than the plastic Bundies most of
the other kids played in my grade school band. Alas, for an adult amateur,
it's a stinker, with serious built-in intonation problems, mainly due to
extremely wide 12ths. With no private teacher, I ignorantly used the
original plastic mouthpiece-shaped object all the way through high school.
How I wish that someone had sat me down and persuaded me that I really had
to talk my parents into replacing that beak.

IMHO this 1958 Conn is not as bad as a modern Artley, but I wouldn't
recommend it, even with a good-quality student mouthpiece to replace the
ghastly original. As Walter mentioned, the Conn keys of that era are pot
metal. They break if you look at them crosswise. In the mid-1960s, I
broke the chalumeau G# with my right pinkie finger, during normal playing.
I was nervous in a solo, I punched the key too hard, and the lever snapped
right off. (Jim Lande, who's seen my short, skinny fingers, can vouch for
the fact that no circus would hire me as Barrel-Chested Babette, the Baboon
Woman. If I'm strong enough to break a key, then something's wrong with
the key.) A repairman in California cast a handmade replacement key for
me. Between the conspicuously replaced key and the general lousiness of
the instrument to begin with, I think the re-sale value of my Conn is
approximately US$0.00, so I've kept it, for nostalgia, and for comparison
purposes, but I don't play on it.

Lelia Loban
E-mail: lelialoban@-----.net
Web site (original music scores as audio or print-out):
http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/LeliaLoban

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