Selmer BA Teapot neck

Steve

Steve

Clarinet CE/Moderator
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I haven't tried one. But I think I remember seeing one recently on eBay that was a Mark VI as well.
 
I never played the teakettle neck. But I can remember playing a serie II alto with two pips on the neck, and two pips on the body. It also had two octve keys for the left thumb. Selmer had the mechanism set so that it was easy to play, easy to deal with. But it played like any other alto to me. Great conversation peice, though.

Julian
 
The "teakettle" neck was around for quite awhile. I think it was first introduced in the Selmer Super Series, specifically the Radio Improved models. Here's a pretty example.

I think Julian is referring to the Harmonic mechanism that Selmer had since at least the Mark VI. I've not seen one on anything but an S80, though.
 
No, this horn was not the Harmonic key option. I played one of those, so I'm familiar with that stuffyness. The horn I played was a real double resonance model whipped up by the skunk works in Paris and given by Jerome Selmer to a friend of mine as part of an endorsement deal. The friend, a fairly well known tenor player, got a call to play alto on a show, and the double reso was the only horn he had to play the gig on. So he asked me, a full time alto player, to check the horn for him. The horn played very well, but not better than the horn I was playing everyday at that time, which was probably the very early gold mk6 that I play now.

Later, while my friend was in the midst of a nervous breakdown, he gave the double resonance alto away, donating the horn to a music school in Philadelphia, I was told. I was with him at one point, when all this madness was going down. He tried to give me his beautiful old gold plated mk6 tenor, and a beautiful Haynes low c foot French style flute. I pretended to accept these gifts, but secretly stashed them in a corner in the living room of his house for safe keeping. But if he had offered me that alto, I probably would have walked with it. I often wonder what really happened to it. That horn was a real collectors piece!

Julian
 
Yeah, this horn was definately the one that got away.

I've been thinking about this whole bizarre scenario, and I think that some may find the backround to this story, and my dimly powered speculations sort of interesting.

I've reached the conclusion that I encountered the horn in 1993. I remember being in Paris near the end of 1992, working some one nighters with my friend. He was on very good terms with Patrick and Jerome Selmer, and had a very sweet endorsement deal with them. So we would sometimes go and hang out during the day at their office and shop down on the Rue De La Fantaine Au Roi. And Jerome would come and hang at our gig at night if he was free.

Jerome had an assistant who seemed to be the head technician and research and development guy at Selmer at that time, a young man name Sabastian, who was a wizard, a dynamo with saxophones. Sabastian had developed and constructed a "sax of the future," according to my friend. I didn't see it or play it, but my friend did, and he was very impressed with it. We both got to be on very good terms with Sabastian. He happened to be at my gig one evening when the horn I was playing broke down and I had to nurse it through the remaining portion of the night. (I now remember that I was playing a serie II at that time) Sabastian was kind enough to take me back the the Selmer shops and do the repair on my axe right after the gig, in the middle of the night!

So, I'm thinking that the double resonance alto might have been something that Sabastian had fabbed up, maybe it was his to give to my man.

The horn itself looked pretty much like any other super 80 when I first spied it. Of course, when he turned it around, I could see the double octave keys. One was the normal Selmer contoured key which curved to the right of the thumb rest. The other one was the exact or very similar shaped key, only to the left of the round black plastic. I don't remember exactly, but I seem to remember each key having a separate post and rod, maybe. I'm thinking that the octave key on the right worked the conventional system, and maybe the one on the left activated the hot rod goodies. I encountered the horn at a rehearsal where we we dealing with some pretty difficult music and that's what my focus was on that day, so I was not completely at liberty to really ponder what I had in my hands. Plus, I figured that since my friend owned the horn, I would be able to peruse the details more throughly at a later date. But unfortunately, the horn and I ended up being ships that passed in the night.

Yeah, we got to start calling those Philly music schools. But first, lets go get a cheese steak!

Julian
 
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