 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Jen
Date: 2000-08-20 14:43
Yes...I just picked up a metal clarinet at Irish Fest in Milwaukee, WI yesterday. Its definately eye catching...playable at this point is another matter. What I really need is some information on either metal clarinets or the manufacturer (Ohio Band Instrument Company in Cleveland). If anyone out there also has a metal clarinet I'd love to find out what you think of the sound compared to the wood or even plastic resin forms. I'd just like to find out all that I can. Thanks so much....you can either leave a message here or e-mail me...
Jen
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Author: Dee
Date: 2000-08-20 15:27
Metal clarinets were manufactured in great numbers in the first half of the 1900s. The great majority of them, including those of the Ohio Band Instrument Company, were of student grade. As with today's student grade plastic instruments, some were terrible and some were reasonable. As a result of the many poor ones, they developed a bad reputation and so fell out of favor. According to other postings on this bulletin board, the last metal clarinets were made in the 1960s.
There were a few intermediate grade instruments made as well as a very few professional grade instruments. These did not catch on probably due mostly to consumer resistance and the poor quality of some of the student models.
I think it is fun to own one or two and get them into working condition just to have my own piece of clarinet history. I have two, an Italian made Baronet that has good sound but is very much out of tune and a Noblet that is quite nice.
Naturally a good mouthpiece makes a world of difference as with any clarinet.
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2000-08-20 17:14
Dee's comments are very appropriate, I agree. I have a couple of metals, generally poor, and somewhat more difficult to overhaul, different size pads etc.. When one mentions Cleveland, I think of the King [later name?] line of [quite-good] insts. We have discussed metals many times here, so "Search the Phorum" for these and/or join in our chat session in a few hours, See Dee's post re: it. Don
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Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-08-20 18:52
Funny you should ask -- I just bought a metal Cleveland "American Standard" eefer from the 1930-35 period, before H. N. White started putting the company name on American Standards. I have a 1953 H. H. White catalogue. By then, the American Standard had become the lowest in the student line, with the H. N. White Cleveland in the middle (sold as an intermediate instrument) and the King Master Model at the top. My eefer is now playable but will probably need a pad change, I suspect (old pads that seem okay at first often have "curse of the mummy's tomb," meaning they're more deteriorated than they look, and pack down and fall apart fast because itty bitty bugs have been eating up the felt inside the pads, or it's rotted away, or whatever). I'm not an experienced eefer player, so I hesitate to pass judgment on this clarinet, but it seems pretty good so far. The intonation is mostly okay, though the throat tones have some problems, including a fuzzy tone that's softer than the rest of the range. I'm hoping a stiffer reed will improve the throat tones.
I own a couple of other metal clarinets, both Bb sopranos, an H. Bettoney Silva-Bet probably from the 1930s that's a good clarinet (sold originally as a pro model) and a Selmer Barbier from the 1930s that's better than I'd expect for a beginner instrument. (The Barbier was the low end of the Selmer student line as of 1931.) During the last two years when I've been looking for decent metal clarinets, I've seen loads of dogs. IMHO the ones to stay away from include anything made of very thin metal. Some of the cheapies I've looked at (mostly names I never heard of) are so thin you could just about wrap the bell around a potato and bake it. Most of those flimsy jobs rattle and have dents. The value of metal clarinets is low enough that I stay away from anything dented into the bore (dents into the bore affect intonation and tone), because it would cost more to have the craters banged out than the instrument is worth. A lot of the better instruments have brand names that sound familiar. A good company with a good reputation would hesitate to put its name on junk. I find metal clarinets a bit weird-feeling. They tend to roll in my hands. Yet IMHO the good ones are perfectly viable instruments. They sound... Like clarinets! But look carefully before buying -- especially beware of missing register keys (removed so the nail in the wall can go through the register tube) or extra holes bored for wall hanging, or anything else missing, because there are no replacement parts.
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Author: Willie
Date: 2000-08-21 05:52
Have fun with it. I have three now. The silver Elkhart sounds really good but you have to lip it up a bit in altissimo but you do it automaticly after a while. My Olds looks like crap (won't shine up), sounds fair but in tune. My Holton looks best as it is gold laquered like a sax with silver keys. It tone is lousy and playing it in tune is a challenge to the lips. However a friend has one just like it but silver plated and it sounds much better. Maybe its the laquer, dunno. Lelia is right on about the parts. They are made out of a real rare alloy called unobtainium. Also make sure it has the barrel. I see a lot of metal clarinets that are missing this part.
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2000-08-21 15:27
Vunderbahr!! Lelia and Willie, Both posts are RARE and valuable to we collector NUTS. Don
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Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-08-22 19:27
Update on the metal American Standard eefer....
The pads did start falling apart right away. Today, I replaced all the left hand pads, which were the worst, but I think the lower pads are pretty close to disintegrating, too. The screw on the register key was so frozen I couldn't get it off with penetrating oil and replaced the pad with the key in place. Next I should prop that key open, slip a string through the hole, drop the end of the string out the neck and use it like dental floss to clear out the register key tube, which I'll bet is dirty, since the mouthpiece was. But anyway, the partial pad job did wonders for the bad throat tones. The tone quality cleared up a lot. The worst note is thumb F (bottom space F), which is very flat.
Oh, and when I finished practicing on the new pads, dried the clarinet, put it in the case and picked the case up to put it away, the handle fell right off. Kaboom! That's another thing to watch out for on old instruments -- lots of times, the handle is held on there by leather, and it's also got the Mummy's Curse, even though it might look okay. This leather looked fine on top, but inside, it was dry-rotted to powder. Often the latches are wrecked, too. I keep a web belt in my flea market take-along bag so I can strap an old case closed if I don't trust the latches. Luckily this case has good latches and stayed closed -- and dropped onto the carpet in my home office, instead of the concrete floor of the workshop where I did the repadding. No harm done, but next time I buy something in an old case, even one that looks pretty sound, I'll try to remember to take a closer look at the handle.
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Author: Jen
Date: 2000-08-24 02:38
Thanks for the wonderful input...at least I know what I'll be dealing with. I'd hate to turn what might be a fun instrument into a lamp...which is the suggestion I've gotten from a couple of music shops around here. Thanks....
Jen
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Author: Willie
Date: 2000-08-24 06:16
Don't listen to those fuddy-duds at the music shops. Making any potentionaly playable clarinet into a lamp is blasphamy(sp). Even a metal Pan American doesn't deserve that. Yea I did make one into a lamp once but it was cracked and had a couple of chips on the tone ports. It was beyond reasonal repair. It was also a "hybrid". Each section had a different name.
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