Klarinet Archive - Posting 000440.txt from 2004/02

From: Elgenubi@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Re: Costco Clarinets
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 02:12:16 -0500

Mike Marmer said: Costco doesn't care. They are in the business to sell and
move products, including clarinets.

Ginger said: Any clarinet that sells for less
than $300 is a waste of time and piece of crap. Can't the ICA sue these
people or something? ..........CRAP musical instruments. .......
I'M MAD!

Apologies, Ginger, I edited a little, but I think you're mad??

I'm not making light of this; I can tell my own story, and these instruments
turn my stomach.

But......
This is not a rhetorical question. I really want to know. Why does Costco
sell these? I don't love Costco, but when I was in a hurry to buy a DVD player
without shopping, I went to Costco and bought a DVD player, assuming that the
buyers had found an OK basic player, and that I would pay an OK lowish price.
I always assume that Costco will have basically OK, sound buys. But not
these horns. Why doesn't Yamaha or Leblanc send their buyers there and have
Costco sell their basic stuff? And I'm not talking about taking care of the
small retailer; that is a related but different issue. I don't expect Costco to
care about small retailers, but I do expect them to care about their reputation
as a reliable seller of OK things.

And I have an observation or opinion: not all Chinese instruments are the
same degree of 'crap'. At NAMM this year (my first time there) there were
probably 50 Chinese dealers of clarinets. I believe it is the common belief on this
list and on the BBoard that one should trust almost no oriental clarinet.
But I saw and heard about different degrees of quality; one importer, Chinese,
and a better player than I am, said that they buy their clarinets from a maker
near Beijing, and completely disassemble them and set them up in Fullerton,
California. Costs for Chinese (and Indian) clarinets range from near $50 to
300 and more. Many really do have Silver plated keys. ( Environmental
standards are less in China, so plating can be cheaper---- but that's another issue.)
Some makers say their keys are forged, and not cast pot metal. I wiggled a
lot of right hand trill keys and some felt much better than others. My point
is that Costco could shop harder and find better clarinets than the First Act
horns they now have. Small retailers can and do carry some of these cheaper
horns. We will see more and more of them, as time goes buy. We will need to
shop harder, and we will give the oriental manufacturers the feedback they want
to make better horns. I bet that in 20 years or less they'll be mainland
Chinese horns competing for professional status, as Yamaha does now. And the
beginning of that evolution is now.

Honest disclaimer; I do work in a music store (mostly strings [by the way,
Chinese strings are more advanced than winds, apparently. I think that Western
string dealers have been in China longer, bringing the industry up.]) and we
kick around the idea of what kind of winds we could sell if we did that
business, but mostly I am really curious about how this will play out. And I dislike
predjudice; I believe that sooner or later we will be accepting Chinese
instruments.

Wayne Thompson

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