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Jubilee Bb Soprano Clarinet

Helen

Content Expert Saxophones
Staff member
Administrator
Yesterday at an antique mall, I noticed a clarinet in a display cabinet. Its case was what tipped me off that I needed to take a closer look at it. The case was a typical mid-century, German case, identical in construction to what the Hohner, JK, Hammerschmidt, and D&J saxes came in.

When I asked to take a look at the clarinet, it turned out to be a wooden clarinet, carrying the brand name Jubilee--obviously a stencil--that still had its original leather pull through and tin cork grease case as well. There were no obvious cracks in the wood, and the pads seem like they're in decent shape. The corks need to be greased before I attempt to put it together and try and give the thing a blow mind you, but from what I saw in the mall, it was pretty clear to me that this thing was someone's baby. It and the case were in amazing condition.

Since the price was only $48.00, needless to say, I bought it, only because I figured it would be a nice friend to my 2 JK-stencilled Jubilee saxophones (Toneking stencils).

Honestly, it's been many, many years since I played clarinet, and my knowledge of the instrument has faded into oblivion. I was always more of a bass clarinet player anyway. In any event, I was wondering if anyone had heard of the Jubilee brand before, and had any idea of who might have stencilled it. A quick search this morning netted me a big fat 0.

The clarinet is stamped W. Germany, and is serial # 1170XX. It appears to have nickel plated keys.

The lighting hasn't been good enough to take photos yet this morning, but when it is, I'll take some, and post them on my site. I'll update this thread with a link when they're up.

Oh, and sadly, it's a Boehm system instrument. (An Albert would have been way more interesting, at least for me.)

Thanks for any light anyone might be able to shed, on this mysterious little German instrument.
 
It has been a long time since i have seen an Albert system horn that wasn't cracked. Something that old with that thin of cross sections is just a site with cracks waiting to happen, and unless it's been stored in decent conditions, the stresses built into pieces of wood will almost always find their way to the surface.

Still, you don't know if you don't look. The only way to find one is to look at a lot of duds in the process.
 
OK, I've got the photos up now. I did a blog post about it today, so they're contained in the post. I did up a gallery of about 23 or pics.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated!
 
I vaguely recall that that could be a keilwerth. No, not the main Keilwerth we all know from saxes but one of the other Keilwerths.

Years ago I did some research into the Newer Couf instruments (trumpet, clarinet, etc) and for the woodwinds I looked at the germanic area makers. And one of the Keilwerths made clarinets for a bit.

So I would research into Keilwerth to see what they did.
 
Well my original thought (before I saw W. Germany) was that this might be a Richard Keilweth. That would have made sense, since Julius made the saxes for his brother Richard, that he in turn would have had clarinets made by Richard. And since Julius had a contract with Jubilee to build saxes, that he might have also had a contract to supply clarinets.

However, after WWII, when Julius and his family moved to Nauheim from Graslitz, Richard stayed in Graslitz and worked for Amati, IIRC. I'm not clear on when he left and started his own company, but my thinking was if JK did get their clarinets from RK after he started his own company, he still wasn't in W. Germany. I would have thought that would have been verboten at the time, to stamp an instrument as originating in W. Germany, if it had in fact been made in an Eastern Block country.

After I thought this through, I was left with: Who else might have built it? Other than Hammerschmidt, I don't know of any German clarinet makers. I'm sure there's lots of them, I just don't know of any... Since I haven't been a clarinet player in more than 25 years, and certainly have never studied the manufacturers, I was stumped...:confused:

I might be wrong in my logic about Richard Keilwerth too. Perhaps there is some old export or import regulation that I'm not familiar with.

In any event, I have noticed something very interesting about Jubilee instruments, there seems to be a lot of them here on the West Coast of Canada. I personally now have 3. I also know of another sax player who just picked up a Jubilee alto sax from the 1960s--mine is from 1957--that is also a JK-stencil. I am starting to wonder if some now-defunct music store didn't bring the brand in. I know that my tenor was bought new, so I should check with the former owner, to see where he bought it.
 
If there's a high local concentration of them (and I've never heard of the brand before this discussion came up), I'd say that a local store bringing in cheaper stencils was almost certainly the cause. We had some sort of special trade agreement with the Czechs at one point here in the USA, and they were allowed to export to us when trade from the Communist bloc in general was verboten.

It may be that Canada (with more reasonable trade policies alongside of everything else - I have given up on ever getting back to Cuba again, thanks to our schizoid foreign policies) has tapped that well as well.
 
fwiw there was a JK clarinet listed on ebay germany recently. I think it was Boehm, but can't really remember, no time to dig it out now.

According to this, RK left Amati in 1951:
http://www.saxontheweb.net/Resources/Amati-History.html

Kohlert were making clarinets post WWII in Winnenden. Boehm and German system. They did a lot of stencilling (and it killed them). But I throw that in as a suggestion, or speculation.

My guess is that without a maker's mark, or a definitive history, you'll end up none the wiser...
 
My guess is that without a maker's mark, or a definitive history, you'll end up none the wiser...

Yeah, I kinda' get that feeling as well. This little beasties are not like saxophones that have distinctive features, from which the manufacturer can often be identified from. :p Hey, I'm not prejudiced or anything, but they all look the same to me. :wink: Or maybe I'm being saxist. :D
 
There are differences between the breeds...

...but they are pretty subtle. Bell flairs differ, barrel 'swells' differ, and the keys are sculpted differently (the differences between the Leblanc style and the others are the most marked).

The most prominent recent difference is the inclusion of the auxiliary Eb/Ab lever on the "professional" grade instruments. It's the one 'additional key' against which there are no real arguments (aside from the spurious "it adds too much weight" - hell, strike the bell ring if it's too heavy for you to handle), and over the past fifteen years it has gone from the occasional "What the hell is that?" to "Oh, I see you have one of those" in the community.

But, the near universality of the ubiquitous 17/6 Klose/Boehm horn can be confusing if you aren't around them all of the time.
 
I'm sorry Terry. Did you say something? What language was that? Oh wait, I get it... It was clarinetese... :emoji_smile: Apparently my bilingualism doesn't translate into musical instrument languages. :wink:

Wow... I now realize how little I remember from the 80s--apparently they are a blur to me. Did I really spend a few years playing this instrument? I must have, but I find it hard to believe. I need to hang my head in shame. Now in my defence, since I have always made my money as a musician playing in rock bands, when was the last time you saw a rock player pulling out a clarinet to solo on? I thought so.

That said, since this is now my 2nd Bb clarinet, and if you count the Kohlert alto clarinet that lives with me, but still officially belongs to a friend, I now have 3 clarinets in my possession. I should see this as a personal challenge, and take up the instrument again.

This afternoon I will finally give this little guy a try and see what is going on with it. I have a nice Herb Couf mouthpiece circa late 70s. I'll locate that, and some reeds, and see what's going on with this little hunk o' wood.
 
There are tons of various differences between makes, if only everything was cataloged.

But the thickness of the ring keys. The flair of the arm that is soldered to the rings, the Lowerjoint top pad cup arm .. the dip in the arm and various curvatures and such.

As mentioned, vintage Leblancs have a definitive design to them that differentiate them from their lower cousins Noblet and Normandy and all the other brands.
 
Well my original thought (before I saw W. Germany) was that this might be a Richard Keilweth. That would have made sense, since Julius made the saxes for his brother Richard, that he in turn would have had clarinets made by Richard. And since Julius had a contract with Jubilee to build saxes, that he might have also had a contract to supply clarinets.

After I thought this through, I was left with: Who else might have built it? Other than Hammerschmidt, I don't know of any German clarinet makers. I'm sure there's lots of them, I just don't know of any... Since I haven't been a clarinet player in more than 25 years, and certainly have never studied the manufacturers, I was stumped...:confused:
I'd be interested to see if it's actually built by Dorfler & Jurka, although I like the Richard Keilwerth idea.

Based on some of my eBay and Google excursions, there were easily as many clarinet manufacturers in Germany and Czech. as there were saxophone makers. I think the only instrument classification with more might have been brasswinds. Or stringed instruments -- primarily guitars.

SOTSDO said:
But, the near universality of the ubiquitous 17/6 Klose/Boehm horn can be confusing if you aren't around them all of the time.
And how.

One of the reasons I've never been known as the musician formerly known as clarinetpics is because the vast majority of clarinets from the past century look basically the same. With saxophones, I don't have to explain that the main difference is this little fiddly bit, you can generally see that there's a marked difference. If I started talking about clarinets that I think look kewl, like 18th-19th century ones, they're far enough out of the mainstream to be more of an historical footnote than guide. However, if I do come across something really interesting, like the Uebel aluminum bass clarinet or the Haynes Thermocouple clarinet, I note it.
 
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Well...

...the differences are there if only you know where to look for them. Most folks viewing a clarinet won't ever notice some of them, even with a detailed study.

Minor appearance issues abound, like the ones previously alluded to. The round bombes key cups, the smooth joint rings, a bell ring versus no bell ring, the goofy little medallions utilized by Buffet and Leblanc - all make zero difference in the way the horn operates but are stylistic differences that can be chalked up to marketing or stylist decisions.

More critical is the sculpturing of the key work. I have always had problems with the 1950s traditional Leblanc key work, which is sturdy and easy to keep in alignment, but which interferes with fat hands like mine on soprano horns. Ditto, if somewhat less of a problem, with Yamaha. Conversely, I find Buffet key work to be too flimsy. Here, Selmer is a happy medium, at least for me.

Present but invisible are the methods of shaping the bore. Straight cylindrical versus poly cylindrical with conic transitions. A shotgun like "choke" near the bell, included for whatever reason. A bazillion different barrel options, with just as many different adherents.

Finally, there are some variations on the key work. Like the high F# key that was once extremely optional but now is common, pro clarinets are increasingly likely to feature an additional key for the left hand little finger, one that completes the little finger key duplication.

Once beyond this, you start to tread in rarified territory. Before we go there, it's best to discuss one Theobald Boehm.

Boehm was the inventor of the "Boehm system" of flute, which he derived from old "simple" flute (a rarely seen instrument these days). He rationalized the key system (in part by constructing and testing a series of flutes for each note, or so I have read), and made it the first "modern" instrument. His big contribution, as far as the clarinet was concerned, was the perfection of the brille key, which translated from the German is "spectacle". Today, we know them as ring keys, and they have smoothed out intonation by allowing automatic operation of additional holes located elsewhere on the instrument beyond the seven finger holes.

But, Boehm the man had very little to do with the "Boehm" clarinet. He was too busy designing things for the flute (like the crutch to support the thing, something that never caught on with flautists) to worry about the clarinet.

Instead, a Frenchman named Klosé (I'll add the accent this time, but not again, and I won't even essay a shot at his first name, a breed of flower) took the Boehm principles, applied them to the clarinet, and adapted a number of little finger key arrangements into the finished product that we all know today. Many consider the Boehm horn to be the ne plus ultra development of the instrument. Others, who have struggled with the tuning of the throat notes, or balance issues with German style oboes, would beg to differ.

The Klose/Boehm does have the advantage of being "the" French clarinet system, one that has been adopted by teachers almost throughout the world. Where once the "Albert" system was dominant, the Klose/Boehm now sits. If you line up a thousand random clarinet cases in a row, it's doubtful that one of them will contain anything but a Klose/Boehm.

Beyond that, there are all of the marvels of the "full Boehm" clarinet, although they are very rarely seen since the 1920's. Beyond that are the additional mechanisms of the Stubbins and Mazzeo "systems", tweaks that address clarinet problems such as the horrid Bb played with first finger and thumb on the left hand.

And, that's without discussion of the relatively rare (but still a major factor in the clarinet world) Oehler system clarinet, seldom seen here but very common once you head east of the Rhine River. Most clarinet players will pass through their life without once seeing an Oehler horn, much less playing one, but they are very alive and well once you travel to Germany, the birthplace of the instrument.

When a Boehm clarinet player sees an Oehler horn being used for the first time, the instant thing that springs to mind is "Wow, there sure is a lot of silver on that horn!" There can be some differences of tone, but from a distance, things just look "funny".

If the Klose/Boehm instrument is considered a radical rethinking of the original clarinet, then the Oehler would be considered the ultimate development of the old "simple" instrument, the descendant of the six key instrument from the days of Beethoven. In some ways as complicated as the saxophone, it cross-connects and vents fingerings in an effort to bring the instrument more perfectly in tune.

Both simple and complicated at the same time, the biggest shock for Klose/Boehm clarinet players comes when they see that it has no bridge key. A subtle difference, but one beloved by most who discover it, is the patent C# mechanism present on most Oehler horns. It requires some reprogramming of the player's mind, but it is a nice trick to have around once you know it is there.

I enjoy the Oehler horn that I finally was able to purchase - as long as I am operating in sharp keys. Shift over to the world of flats, and I reach for the Klose/Boehm each and every time.

Beyond the Oehler lies the legions of old "Albert" clarinets, once about equal in numbers to those of the Boehm system but now merely curiosities to collectors and weird old people like me - I learned to play clarinet on an Albert bass, a long, long time ago. They look like a very simple Oehler, have a number of intonation issues that have to be compensated for when playing them, but also have a certain "easy" feel to them, something lacking in both the Klose/Boehm and the Oehler. They too are a development of the original clarinet, rather than a radical rethink of the issue.

And then there's the Romero...but we best not go there - Romero horns are incredibly complicated and just as incredibly rare (I've held one in my hands back in the 1960s, but they are mostly museum pieces these days).
 
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