Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2018-01-25 21:39
Well, S&S decided to start making modern boxwood clarinets after having made historical replica boxwood clarinets for decades. I don't know when that was, but it seems to be at least 10 years ago. They live on their reputation, which is substantially word of mouth. Jochen's reputation, in particular, has been impeccable with everyone I've asked or heard talk about him. When you try instruments out there, there mostly aren't "demo" horns. You try out stuff they are finishing up on and haven't delivered yet. Most of their Boehm instruments when I was there were boxwood, and they were headed for orchestras in Holland. If they hadn't figured out how to make stable boxwood instruments, they wouldn't be doing that. It's just not that kind of operation. They are careful, meticulous, responsible and principled people, and they guarantee their work, so they'd end up losing money on the things if they warped and/or cracked with any regularity.
Buffet, on the other hand, has done a prototype of one of their very good instruments in boxwood, with no history of making or selling boxwood instruments, presumably to see what it sounds like and whether there might be a market. That's fantastic, but it's not comparable with what S&S is doing, and more to the point, the instruments don't seem to sound very similar at all.
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