Well I finally found one. A clarinet-playing colleague of mine emailed me over the weekend, and told me that a thrift shop in Burnaby--another suburb of Vancouver--had a Bb Albert system in decent shape. It's made of grenadilla, with no cracks or repairs, a stock mouthpiece, no mouthpiece cap, and sadly no case. A really crappy reed comes with it too though. The clarinet does need to be re-padded, but I went into the shop today, and picked it up.
Since I basically remember none of my clarinet fingerings from way back when anyway, and I've tried to relearn them to no avail, I thought I'd give the Albert system a try. Will it be the cure to my clarinet woes? No, of course it won't turn me into a concert clarinetist, but I thought it can't be any worse than the horrible sounds that emanated from my little Boehm licorice stick last year.
I'll take some pics in the next day or two and post them here. Perhaps someone here can tell me something about this potentially demonic instrument.
Oh, I should mention, the only reason I'm interested in relearning clarinet is that I'm playing in a Big Band, and my part does have a few clarinet doubles in it. Until now I've played them on sax, but at some point I really do need to switch over to clarinet.
Since I basically remember none of my clarinet fingerings from way back when anyway, and I've tried to relearn them to no avail, I thought I'd give the Albert system a try. Will it be the cure to my clarinet woes? No, of course it won't turn me into a concert clarinetist, but I thought it can't be any worse than the horrible sounds that emanated from my little Boehm licorice stick last year.
I'll take some pics in the next day or two and post them here. Perhaps someone here can tell me something about this potentially demonic instrument.
Oh, I should mention, the only reason I'm interested in relearning clarinet is that I'm playing in a Big Band, and my part does have a few clarinet doubles in it. Until now I've played them on sax, but at some point I really do need to switch over to clarinet.