 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: jenny_fir_tree
Date: 2005-07-29 19:09
I'm trying to find out about my clarinet - and thought this would be the place to do it!
It's a Bb with: Pan-American DIV.C.G.CONN,LTD. U.S.A. on the bell.
The serial number is 148575.
It's brown wood with very visible grain ranging from black, through toffee, to fawn in colour. The grain of each piece lines up, so I guess it's from a single length of wood.
The white, plastic mouthpiece is also Pan-American.
The ligature only has a single screw instead of the usual 2.
That's it, thanks in advance.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2005-07-29 20:22
jenny -
Pan American clarinets were, alas, very low quality. Actually, my very first clarinet was a PanAm, soon switched for a Bundy.
The striped surface you see is laminate -- i.e., plastic -- over a black plastic interior. There's an urban legend that the instruments were made from "propellor wood" from WW I fighters, but that's untrue.
The model was made in the midle to late 1950s. It wasn't made for very long, because the "wood" layer was quite thin and tended to delaminate from the core.
You can find several threads on the instruments by using the Search function at the top of the page and entering "(propellor OR propeller) wood"
You can certainly refurbish the instrument, but it will probably need all new pads. For the same money, you'd have a better instrument if you go to a used Bundy, or, if you can afford it, a new Yamaha or Vito.
Ken Shaw
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Author: BobD
Date: 2005-07-29 22:53
The PanAm will probably become a collectors item in years to come as it represents some American ingenuity.
Bob Draznik
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Author: Fred
Date: 2005-07-29 22:59
While not a particularly decent clarinet, they are collector's items and sell well on ebay for far more than some better clarinets do. So it's not all bad news . . .
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Author: Kel
Date: 2005-07-29 23:56
My first clarinet was a Pan Am. It didn't play all that badly, but I wore through the pot metal keys in about three years.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2005-07-30 00:43
A dealer at the Georgetown Flea Market in Washington, D. C. (Sundays, across Wisconsin Ave. from the "social Safeway," if anyone's interested) has been trying to sell a "propeller wood" Pan American for two years now. He started out asking $120. It didn't sell for about four months at that price. Then somebody convinced him the instrument is rare and collectible, so he raised the price to $350.
The fact that it's just been sitting there all this time should have told him something else by now. I don't try to argue with people who think they've got gold when I think they've got coal; he'd probably just get mad--but I think the only person collecting that clarinet is him.
Ken, are you sure that the surface is always plastic laminate? I could swear that the Georgetown Pan American is laminated with wood. Then again, I'm looking at it with 57-year-old eyes.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: kal
Date: 2005-07-31 04:22
This is the first time I've ever heard the brown PanAms accused of being plastic.
If there were, in fact, Pan Ams made of "laminate -- i.e., plastic -- over a black plastic interior", then they are the exception, not the rule. I've gotten up close and personal with several of these instruments. They are made of wood laminate, were dubbed "violin-finished" and are in fact quite beautiful. The story that the wood came from war plane propellers is indeed just a story (probably dreamed up by Conn), but they are made of wood. Just not one chunk of wood. I wouldn't call them particularly low-quality, either. They were prone to cracking (different sources will give different explanations: bad wood, bad glue, bad process, whathaveyou) but were otherwise pretty decent student grade instruments.
Here's a pretty picture:
http://www.uark.edu/ua/nc/NCCollectionPage/Page/ConnPanAmerican.htm.
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Author: jim lande
Date: 2005-07-31 04:33
The propeller wood ones really are nice looking. The second most interesting thing about them is that they have these little tiny screws that are perpendicular to the pivot screws and lock them. They tend to run $200 to $250 on eBay, even when the seller makes clear that they are not rosewood.
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Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2005-07-31 04:51
The tiny screws in the posts to lock the key screws in were a Conn feature across most (if not all) their clarinet models (and saxes) back in the 20's/30's or so --- not just the student PanAms. Pain in the butt if they get rusted in place.......
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Author: Dee
Date: 2005-07-31 11:34
The problem with actually playing a Pan Am is two fold. The keys are very clunky making it somewhat uncomfortable to play. The intonation is all over the place making it a lot of work to play in tune. However they had a nice big, bold, clear sound.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2005-07-31 23:00
Well, curioser and curioser. I hadn't inspected that wildly wood-grained Pan Am at the Georgetown Flea Market closely until today, because the price was too far out of line for me to bother. I did closely inspect a "propeller wood" Pan Am at the Bethesda Farmer's Market flea a couple of years ago and carried away the impression it was made of wood; therefore I assumed those clarinets were always wood. Today I took a good, close look at the tenon ends, the tone holes and as far as I could see into the inside of the one at Georgetown. It's plastic. No doubt about it. It had me fooled. Well, that explains why it didn't de-laminate after being displayed outdoors many Sundays in all types of weather.... Dee, I agree with you about those key touches. They're large and they feel clumsy.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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