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Upgrade Ambivalence

Author: jcm499
Date: 2016-03-18 07:49

I’m having some clarinet-related feelings, and I hope you guys can help me out.

The short problem:

I’m considering a clarinet “upgrade,” but my sentimental attachment to my current horn makes it difficult. What should I do?

The full story, and it’s a bit of a ramble:

I have a Buffet E-12—not the new E-12F, but the old E-12 made under the Buffet name by Schreiber in Germany. It was purchased new for me in 1998, when I was eight years old. I’m now 25. I started playing around age 6, on a clarinet my dad bought for $20 at a swap meet. When I got a teacher through my elementary school, the teacher recommended that my dad buy me a better clarinet, so my dad took me to the local music store. My dad wanted to buy me a plastic Selmer USA because my teacher had explicitly told him not to, and my dad is contrary like that. Fortunately, the young salesgirl suggested I try this Buffet, and she sent me, my dad, and the clarinet into a practice room. I blew my first note—the bottom E—and my dad was so bowled over by the richness and resonance of the tone that he bought the clarinet on the spot, without bargaining. That was very unusual for him—he used to bargain even at department stores, and get it, too!

I played that Buffet E-12 through the rest of elementary school, junior high, high school, college, and law school. We’ve been together through good times and bad, even in law school when I became very depressed and played terribly little. We’ve made music everywhere from bedroom to band room, concert stages, bars and clubs, even Carnegie Hall.

And I suspect it’s a good horn, though I’ve played it since I was a little kid so it’s hard for me to objectively tell. But that it’s considered an intermediate-level student model is causing me anxiety. Maybe the difference between “intermediate” and “professional” is just marketing, and maybe I won’t really get anything by buying a “pro” horn. After all, by the time I reached high school, I noticed some of peers had better clarinets. When I joined the local youth orchestra as principal clarinet, the second clarinetist had a spectacular matched set of R-13 Prestige clarinets in an equally spectacular leather attaché case. (I hadn’t expected to make the orchestra when I auditioned, so I didn’t have an “A” clarinet. When I learned that in fact I did make it in, I hastily bought a Noblet 45 “A” the day before the first rehearsal. So there I was at the first rehearsal, with a one-day old clarinet, having never played in an orchestra before, and the first thing we did was sight-read Capriccio Espagnol. Talk about exhilarating!) In college-- a large, old, well-known private research university on the East Coast of the United States—I joined the orchestra, again as principal clarinet, and the second clarinetist (who I swear was better than me, but I audition well) had those really fancy Backun horns. My “intermediate” horn didn’t stop me from receiving compliments on my tone and intonation in those and other ensembles—I assume those compliments weren’t left-handed!

But on the other hand, now that I’m trying to get back into music after my miserable law school hiatus, how can I play out again in full confidence, knowing I’m not doing everything possible to sound the best I can?

Since I expect to play mostly jazz (always my main interest) now, with little or no legit mixed in, I’m considering an older big-bore clarinet like so many jazzmen seem to favor: Selmer Balanced/Centered Tone, Leblanc Dynamique H, or something. Logically I really have nothing to lose by just buying one, except maybe a few hundred dollars, at most, if it’s terrible and I want to resell it. But somehow—and I know this is crazy—I feel like I’m betraying that Buffet E-12 I’ve played since I was a kid.

What do you think I should do?