Author: John Peacock
Date: 2021-11-11 18:58
Hi Ramon. I acquired the instruments separately, and yes they must have been made at least 12 months apart, so hardly "matched" Mind you, I've never been clear if that term meant much: instruments with nearby serial numbers could easily have been finished by different craftsmen - and even if made almost consecutively by the same person, results for each instrument probably varied. So in those days, as now with Buffet, probably the only way to achieve genuine matching is for the player to select a Bb and A from a large number of alternatives of each. For what it's worth, my pair are identical in keywork design, down to the LH bis key and the patent guide for the lower LH F#/C# key.
What you say about the bore makes sense: we know that 1010 mouthpieces are notorious for being cylindrical, so it seems likely that the same cylinder continued through the barrel into the top joint. But with the barrel having a serial number, I guess it wouldn't need a separate A/Bb designation.
Your last point about personalisation is a strong one. We know e.g. from Brymer's anecdote about him & Roy Jowitt swapping instruments that different people play intrinsically at different pitches, so I guess it's plausible that the first owner of my A had a sharp tendency and ordered a long barrel to compensate. To test this hypothesis, one would somehow need to access their Bb and see if it also had a 67-ish barrel.
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