Mystery Noblet metal (brass) clarinet

[room34]

I've just come into possession of this (very?) old Noblet metal clarinet. It's in pretty bad shape. I'm not necessarily interested in making it playable, just trying to find out when it was made!

The clarinet came to me without a case. It's tarnished, missing a pad on the E-flat sliver key, lots of pads are in bad shape, there are various dents, bent springs, and the whole body is slightly bent!

Anyway… here's what I can see on it. The Noblet logo is stamped on the bell inside an oval/rounded-square shape. Someone hand-etched "Mpls Bd of Ed" on the bell, so obviously this was a school instrument.

There are two numbers. Stamped on the back of the body just above the bell is what I believe is the (very low) serial number: 138.

Up on the side of the body just above the thumb rest, is another hand-etched number: MNO2711-1-131. Model number 27…?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

 

[ghostler]

@pete who is the Admin of this site has a webpage under his Clarinet Perfection site:

Clarinet Perfection: S/N's for Noblet, scrolling about 2/3rds the way down is an entry, 1920’s – 1930’s metal; Metal Noblet SN73xx.

Perhaps he meant up to S/N's 73xx? And yours is possibly toward the lower spectrum of earliest 1920's?

Personally I do not have a metal clarinet, but they did seem popular up to and in WW2. (Anyway, my own personal introspection due to my limited knowledge.)

 

[room34]

@ghostler Thanks… I did check out that page before posting here but it wasn't clear to me what that line meant. If 73xx is the top end of the serial numbers issued during that period, then that does make sense. My general impression is that this most likely is from the 1920s, although it also sounds like the earliest of those metal Noblet models had the raised logo in the diamond shape, not the flat stamped oval shape on this one.

I'm going to assume 1920s for now but definitely still looking for something more definite! Unfortunately if all the old records were destroyed in a fire, maybe this is the best I'll be able to do.

Edit: OK, I understand what those notes indicate. They're just info about the serial numbers on the particular clarinets shown in the pictures linked from the page… a metal one with a blurry serial number (looks like 7842 to me), and a wood Model 40 with S/N 4854D.

Anyway… definitely there does not seem to be much info online about these early Noblet brass clarinets. I did find a few auctions on eBay and Reverb but they all had 4-digit serial numbers.

 

[ghostler]

Noblet is a French brand. Some of the historical obscurity may be due to the way business was done back then.

Example, I purchased on E-Bay 13 years ago, a Beaugnier Vito low Bb Baritone Sax for $315 with shipping included, came from the east coast. I was the highest bidder.

It was in very rough shape, had a deep south US high school name stenciled on its case. It had many repairs, dents, key racks were warped, pad heights were way off. Good was decent pads that sealed. Over a period of a couple years, I resoldered fractured sweat soldering joints, bent the key racks back into alignment, removed dents, adjusted all pad heights. Lo and behold, this Vito (Le Blanc's brand for beginner instruments) played well in tune, altissimo was very easy to play, one of the free-est blowing saxes I've owned. Found only difference was professional model had better engraving, better pad guard jewels and more TLC in tuning. It has the darker sound of earlier saxes.

Best I could tell based on the left pinky keys and low pads on the left side when facing toward mouthpiece was some time around early 1950's. Data was available on the later models from about mid 1950's on but the left pinky paddles were typical on early saxes from around the 1920's to mine. I found a Beaugnier Vito tenor sax from the early 1950's, so figured I was close in dating it.

Beaugnier is a suburb of Paris, France. This Le Blanc factory made a number of stencils for other brand names. All instruments were hand made. Le Blanc closed the factory around 1971 because they could not compete with modern manufacturing methods.

Not sure, but I think they may have made Noblet stencils as well. An interesting fact was they were across the street from Selmer. Some employees worked in both factories.

 

[pete]

has a webpage under his Clarinet Perfection site:

That's Steve's website, not mine.

 

[ghostler]

That's Steve's website, not mine.

Sorry @pete , my bad. Looked just now, saw "Steve" in the "About". Reading that earlier, somehow got you and him mixed up. Again, my apologies.

 

[pete]

I'm far better looking

 

[Steve]

FYI, so we know about this, I think the poster emailed me directly.

fyi, the Noblet metal clarinets I don't think followed the regular Noblet serial numbers.
Noblet for their metal clarinets tended to restart serial numbers (as they did for their wood ones for short bits before continuing with the previous serial numbers).
Noblet made metal clarinets from the 1920s going in to the 1960s.
The old Noblets from the 1920s (a few with a large, tilted NOBLET etched on with some fancy other engraving around it (like saxes) then later a raised diamond patch emblem and silver plated brass) were nice, but the later ones were strictly student grade. They had various emblems on the bell but most later ones were etched in the metal and not a metal patch like the earlier ones.
The later ones were nickel (1950s thru 60s) or even lacquered brass (late 1950s thru 1960s) was the last run both of these having their own serial numbers.