Where have all the flowers gone...

[SOTSDO]

This evening, I did my usual monthly sweep of eBay, just to see what was cooking. One 10S "everything but the low Eb" that I put a bid on (upon?), plus piles of Selmer horns all the way back to the 1930's with some variation or other of the various Selmer innovations/extra mechanisms.

Then, I punched the magic name "Leblanc" into the search blank, and.....nada. Oh, there was the usually assortment of Vito, Noblet, Normandy and Leblanc horns ("A Vito Dazzler in the very popular green color, only $600! LOOK!"), but, out of all of the "Leblanc" horns, not one had an articulated G#, fork Eb, or low Eb. (There was one LH Eb lever on an up end horn.)

Now, Selmer discontinued the "full Boehm" option and the other add ons (and Maezzo and Grachi "systems') back in the late 1970's, near as I can tell, while Leblanc kept on keepin' on with full Boehms and the Pete Fountain "near full Boehm" as late (in part) as 2000.

So, selmer stops circa 1975-ish, Leblanc around 2000.

Question: Where are all of the Leblanc alternative mechanism horns? Has anyone seen any of these?

 

[pete]

I've owned only one Leblanc clarinet: a Normandy. I think it was a 4. I did play a Leblanc Bb contra for awhile: paperclip down to low C.

As to where all the vintage Leblancs are, I'm not sure. Maybe they're so good, people keep 'em. That or they don't have much value on the market.

I can say that if I had a choice of a Leblanc whatever, both in the same condition and at the same price, I'd go for the extra keywork.

 

[Groovekiller]

I hate "full Boehm" clarinets. A real pain to keep in adjustment, except for the low Eb if there is one, and the articulated C#/G# eliminates the very good "long fingering" altissimo F natural.
I've sat next to a lot of great symphonic clarinet players, and I've never seen one of those guys play a full Boehm

 

[pete]

I kinda mentioned this awhile back: while I had a relatively high-end contrabass, I never played any notes lower than an E, in the year I had it. Now, I'm one of those folks that don't mind the extra keywork, provided it doesn't get in the way, so I wouldn't mind the extended range, but Groove's got a very good point: more complexity = more things that can go wrong. Taking my contra, for instance, it had these little, spindly arms that connected the key to the keycup for the range past E (IIRC; might have been a bit higher, even) and those were seriously easy to knock out of alignment.

 

[SOTSDO]

Conversely, I've been playing full Boehm horns for over forty years, and haven't had a bit of trouble with "regulation" of same. The same holds true for the most vulnerable bit of keywork on my bass, the articulated G#.

As for the "lost" fingering, it's in what is arguably the least appealing register of the clarinet, one where you spend a lot less time than, say, the area covered by the run over the break up to Eb in the staff. Whenever I see another clarinet player agonizing over (and writing in) the classic "LRLR" pattern in a chart, I just slide through the passage without thinking, taking notes with either little finger as circumstances happen to dictate at the time.

I'm not as big a fan of the fork Eb, but even it comes in for the occasional use when the keys migrate to the far north or south. The low Eb is relatively useless if you own a A clarinet, but it does regularize the timbre of the long B relative to the notes above it. (It does make getting a new case an exercise in frustration, however.)

I got started with them when my grandfather, a crusty old Bavarian who played Albert horns (all Buffets, by the way) instead of the traditional Oehlers, decided to work his way around the rollers and patent C# by picking up with the Boehm "two sided" little finger arrangement. As the only horns he could find in the 1920's with this feature were the full Boehm ones, his decision was made for him. And, when I complained about the whole LRLR business, he let me try one of his horns, and I was sold from that point forward.

Push comes to shove, any personal opinions aside, the standard "extra" mechanisms (as opposed to "non-standards" like Maezzo or Gracchi (sp?)) were produced for about a century by three major manufacturers of Boehm clarinets (Selmer, Leblanc, Buffet), plus one major manufacturer of German-style clarinets as a Boehm sideline (Heckel). Somebody was buying them during that time span.

But, if you don't like them, then don't use them. Just like Backun bells, Rovner ligatures and other such frippery, no one is holding a gun to your head and requiring you to take them up.