I rather like Yamahas. They're quite good for the price.
According to wwbw, the YCL-450 is $1262 for nickel keywork and a shade over $1500 for silver keywork. You can buy an awful lot of good used clarinet for that. Our forum sponsor, has a
Yamaha 851II CX,
Yamaha 852II CS, and a
Yamaha CSV Master on eBay, each for under $1700, no reserve. These are all really high-end pro horns. And we don't just let anyone have an ad here. They have to
give us a lot of money have a good reputation.
(FWIW, the Selmer Bb and A pair he's selling for $1000 looks very intriguing. Regardless of the fact that I've never needed an A clarinet.)
Mouthpiece choice is very individual. I was extremely happy with my
Selmer C85/120 mouthpiece, which I played on a variety of student, intermediate, and pro clarinets. However, the
Vandoren B40 and
B45 were also very nice and I used those for awhile. My recommendation is that you call your local music shop, say that you
will definitely buy from them, but you want to try a few mouthpieces. That's probably the best bet.
Oh. For reference, I started out on Bb clarinet, went to bari sax, played bass clarinet, then contrabass clarinet, and played around on other saxophone pitches, as needed. I used 3.5 reeds on everything and I preferred Vandoren reeds. The ones I used on bari were discontinued some 30 years ago. I'm essentially "medically retired" from playing.