Klarinet Archive - Posting 000404.txt from 2006/03
From: "Rommel John Miller" <rjmiller@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] I spoke from experience about WWBW
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 21:36:19 -0500
Listen folks, I don't want to inspire or incite any more ire that I have to,
but all I did was relate my personal experiences with WWBW, and where I
think they fall short. Becasue the advice I got about NOT CLAMPING the Low
E key can cause the pads to shift and thus create the problem I am
experiencing.
Now WWBW owns MUSIC-123, the former in IN, and the latter in NJ, but all
internet orders are shipped from South Bend, IN, WWBW chief base of
operations.
I am a 100% service connected disabled veteran with a serious enough mental
illness to be considered crazy (my word) but the VA's Voc Rehab people
bought me a Buffet R-13 from Music-123 and it came fully clamped.
Not one of the three R-13's I have recently received from WWBW have had
those open keys clamped shut and tight for shipment, and yes apparently one
or both of the pads on this one (#3) slipped or moved or did something to
produce nasty shrill noises to issue forth, more than a beautifully formed
Low E.
This is what got under my skin about WWBW, why don't they ship the
instrument the way it came from Paris, i.e. CLAMPED?
But all this ruckus either over my disdain for WWBW, or my fanatic desire
for an impossibly perfect Clarinet is getting me down.
I neither hate WWBW nor do I want the perfect Clarinet!
All I want is one that plays as beautifully as the one the VA bought for me.
And what happened to that Clarinet? I sold it in September in order to
raise much needed funds, and I thought a $2K Clarinet would fetch a nice
piece of cash. It didn't, only $400, but I needed the money and I took the
offer. I regret that I did. But experience leaves us all with regrets we
would much rather go back and fix rather than give up and move on.
Okay, so I make mistakes! Sue me! Who out there dares call him or herself
"perfect?" I hope not a single one of us, regardless of how accomplished we
might like to think ourselves.
I will go back to WWBW again, but probably NOT for instrument purchases, and
that is due to the nature I now know of buying an instrument: Try, Try, and
Try some more. But you can't beat WWBW and Music 123 on their prices,
especially on things essential to the study of the instrument.
I feel as though all I do is open one Padora's Box after the other on this
forum, and rather than fight with anyone anymore about the merits or lack of
ethics, as "EYE" subjectively see them, will remain my own problem and I
will NEVER bring them to this forum again.
But as for speaking subjectively about my own expereince with WWBW, and how
it was tempered by those I met at the Peabody Conservatory on a recently
past Sunday, I can only say that I do so from my own sense of having been
used.
And this is not just WWBW, but in my daily life as well, what can you do
when you are told that you shouldn't work, or can't work becasue of your
disability? Isn't it hard enough for a mentally ill person to get treated
fairly? And yet every job I have applied for since graduation from College
in 1995 has been turned down, and it is as if potential employers can sense
that I am a nut case (my words) and just prefer not to hire me.
But to have had a beautiful R-13 that I foolishly sold, and now to go about
trying to replace it, all I am getting is walked over and it doesn't feel
nice, not one bit.
And Ethics pertain to the way we treat others, and that is what I was going
on about when I was saying WWBW was being unethical, and that they should
apsire for a greater sense of obligation/duty to the Other. Forgive me for
speaking my mind, my heart, and my head, but I know what it is like to be
despised for being something or someone other than a normal (again, my word)
person, and it really, really hurts.
Better I should keep quiet on these matters and suffer my trials privately,
for I will NEVER speak of this again, and I hope the banter about what I
said will now die an ignominious death. For I should know better than to
open my mouth and offer an opinion, but sure enough, plenty of Others are
always eager to have me listen and obey their sage wisdom.
I speak from experience. That is all. And I feel burnt. But what is more
I feel that where people at this thing I went to at the Peabody were telling
me that WWBW is not to be trusted, whereas you all tell me otherwise.
Advice, Advice, Advice, that's all I get and yet I offer not one iota of it,
I just try to speak from my own expereince with this, tempered with the
experiences I have had in life, and I have to tell you all that I always
come up short and with my hands stinking.
I learned a lesson about opening my mouth, fine, I will never open it again.
But all I can say is "Caveat Emptor" in a big way for myself, not any of you
all, but just me, I know that once bitten, twice shy applies here, and if
WWBW would refund my money I would take it and go elsewhere, but all I get
are store credits, and that keeps me tied to them. And I will not give up
until Scott Kurtzweil and Francois Kloc finally send me that much desired
"sweet clarinet" in my subjective eyes.
I don't see the big picture, I just see and react to how things impact, and
affect me. I just can't see the forest, for all the trees, and that is
ethics, for each tree is an Other as much as I am radically other from most
of you.
I am also a jerk, and I live alone for good reason, I wear others down and
out. I am like a heroin addict always looking for a fix, I wear people out
the way a drug addict wears others down.
I give up sometimes I just wonder if all of this is worth it and whether or
not I should just give up on it all as it seems to have given up on me.
I am sorry for hurting anyones feelings, either about WWBW or me, I just
tried to speak from expereince, and none of us can say our expereinces are
like any other. Everyone sees life subjectively and that is where I try to
frame my own Point of View.
So it doesn't mesh.
But I have a $2,500.00 clarinet here that is useless if it can't plat Low E,
and I already owe Larry Naylor for overhauling my E-11, that set me back
$400
What is it going to take to get this Clarinet, a presumably new one to that
state? Each of us, or at least "eye" only have so much money, and so much
patience.
I often what it must be like to be able to afford an instrument at whim. To
say "I need a bass clarinet" or a Yanigasawa Tenor Sax, and just shell out
the do-re-mi to pay for it.
I don't have that luxury, I only have so much money, and getting a job is
out given my mental illness, and believe me, I have applied for jobs, but no
one wants me. Fine, an eccentric musician I am then, and yet I can't even
get along with them.
I just give up.
Rommel John Miller
(Hebrew name: Raphael Jochanan ben Avraham Miller)
308 Dale Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21206
410-668-4784
410-967-8994 (cell)
rjmiller@-----.net
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend,
inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
---"Groucho" Marx
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