Klarinet Archive - Posting 000060.txt from 2004/03

From: "Ginger Hill" <Gigi1182@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Oriental Clarinets
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 08:06:09 -0500

Costco is misrepresenting musical instruments as a whole. Selling such
horrid excuses for clarinets is a disgrace to clarinetists everywhere.

I will speak no further on this topic.

~Ginger

-----Original Message-----
From: Matthew Lloyd [mailto:Matthew@-----.f9.co.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 6:22 AM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: [kl] Oriental Clarinets

A huge heap of abuse is placed on oriental clarinets - admittedly
usually Chinese - but one must remember that Yamaha are an oriental
company and I don't think anyone would suggest that they were anything
other than a very significant maker indeed.

Ok - I know you all know this - but it isn't the geography that makes
the clarinet poor.....

We don't have Costco in England, at least as far as I am aware, but I
have very recently seen a cheap remaindered book shop in Leicester
selling clarinets for under one hundred pounds sterling. To my
(educated) eye they look dire - but be honest - how many could look at a
Buffet RC and one of these cheap clarinets and explain why one is worth
fifteen to twenty times the price of the other if he were not a clarinet
player (or at least a musician).

Ginger - what are you saying Costco are misrepresenting? What they sell
is a clarinet. It may not be a clarinet any of us would play, but it
clearly is a clarinet. What is the misrepresentation? What they do is
understandable and natural, at least in their world, and we will never
stop them.

You get what you pay for - a general rule that still applies. We all
know that - and it is up to teachers to teach the parents of young
players that it does matter what they play. That is the only way that
the clarinet world will succeed to get this message across, and I'm
afraid that shops like yours will not succeed in getting the message
across as anyone who is likely to buy at Costco would presumably suggest
that you had a vested interest (which you have) leading to biased advice
(which isn't the case).

Americans are supposed to like Capitalism. Costco are merely being good
capitalists. You can't have your cake and eat it.

Matthew Lloyd

-----Original Message-----
From: Elgenubi@-----.com [mailto:Elgenubi@-----.com]
Sent: 27 February 2004 07:09
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: [kl] Re: Costco Clarinets

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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