I noticed one of these horns on eBay. I thought it looked an awful lot like an Akustik. However, there's one major difference: the H Cleyton doesn't have rolled tone holes. Besides, the serial number is a bit high on the eBay horn (32740), which would take it from the Akustik era into the Weltklang era. A Weltklang with a serial number that high looks a lot more different.
I did a couple Google searches and found this kewl looking horn. I think it looks closer to a Weltklang than the eBay horn -- and Akustik was fond of the colored pearls -- but the key shapes are still quite different.
There are a couplemore horns on the web, but they're all pretty small and/or blurry pics. There was a thread on SOTW, but it was never answered and the pics are no longer available.
According to the eBay ad, the store that sold these is still around: Garijomundimúsica.
Found another. This one's a bit different and has rolled tone holes. The serial number is 23,xxx, so that's earlier than the above horn. And one one picture you can see the word "Breveté." French-made, then. I'd say "Dolnet." I still have some doubts because of the 32740 horn having wire key guards. The necks on all the Cleytons are also quite different from a stock Dolnet, as are the sheet metal keyguards, and bell-to-body brace.
Oh. Yes, some of the Dolnet "Royal Jazz" models -- those are the ones with the additional keywork and microtuner neck -- do have rolled tone holes.
The first one you linked to has the bell to body brace that is seen in many, many German horns. Hey, maybe the French loved the design so much that they bought some, and finished their order with some rolled tone holes from Germany as well.
Yup. I could argue that it's probably a better bell-to-body brace than the one on "standard" Dolnets.
One of the other things that I came across in my quick research of the H Cleyton was the Solist model from the D. Ansingh company (Netherlands). As far as I can tell, they never actually made their own saxophones, but stenciled them from Dolnet, Weltklang, and others. "Solist" is a Weltklang model name. It was a bit odd to see the name on a French-made instrument. Oh. This D. Ansingh horn is definitely a Dolnet. Not only does it look like a Dolnet soprano, it's also high pitch. Dolnet had high pitch horns available until 1970.
I still think the H Cleyton is awfully custom for being a stencil. I wonder if I'll find something in the future that suggests that Dolnet owned H Cleyton or something like that.
Regarding rolled tone holes (RTH), I know of three French companies that did them: Dolnet (on some Royal Jazz models), Couesnon, and SML. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find a Beaugnier or Pierret with them, if only because they both produced a zillion models. You're absolutely right that RTH seems to have been the rule on German and Czech horns, though. However, I don't remember seeing any ad copy that says that RTH made these horns sound better, until J Keilwerth said that about the SX90R's "tone rings." RTH were originally advertised just to extend pad life.
