Some pad bugs had a field day with this one. That was worth the extra money right there.Īnd about those destroyed pads… this one defies commentary:Īnd these will require no explanation to a repair technician: The pads were destroyed, but the keywork was straight and shiny, the case was nice, and it even came with the (original?) round container of Leblanc Kork-Eze that fits into its own little slot in the case.
Here’s my first project after graduation: A 1963 Normandy Reso-Tone.īought this one for $50 from a man down the road who had bought it for his granddaughter only to find out she had already obtained one. Just needs a swab and a tube of cork grease to be ready to sell.īeen a long time, and I’ve got some posts backed up. I decided to melt some glue into the back of the touchpiece so I had a flat surface to affix the cork to.Ī new Hite Premiere mouthpiece, and a good scrubbing of the outside of the case, and it’s ready to go back out into the world. I could have formed the cork to fit, or just jammed a piece of cork in there like I suspect happens on some of them. For some reason, the backside of the touchpieces on these is concave. I didn’t get a picture of them before I started, but this is the end result after about 45 minutes of flexing each key:Īt least the touchpieces line up properly on this one.Īnother issue with these is corking the side Bb/Eb key. One of the drawbacks to that soft keywork, especially on the Bueschers and stencils, is that the trill keys end up bent six ways from Sunday.
This is one of the benefits of the hopelessly soft keywork that Selmer products were afflicted by from the ’70s onward. The B/F# key on the lower joint was slightly too long but still serviceable, and the C/G# key needed a lot of adjustment in order for the pad cup to sit properly over the tonehole. Re-padding was uneventful, save for a couple key geometry issues which weren’t unexpected, being made by Selmer. It works, but it’s not all that pleasant to do by hand. For lack of a buffing machine, my solution is Flitz polish. Unlike the Normandy done prior, the keys are in dire need of polishing. In addition to the dirt and grime, the pads on this thing were rough. I hope even one person benefits from that knowledge so my being embarrassingly pedantic was not in vain.)
LEBLANC ALTO CLARINET CROOK REPLACEMENT SERIAL NUMBERS
(Fun fact – serial numbers on these are King serials, not those of Selmer. I don’t know if they’re unique to this model, but I don’t think any other Selmer-built stencils used them. This is one of the latter, identical to a Buescher Aristocrat (which itself is simply a Bundy Resonite with inline trill keys) except for the tenon rings. The first Tempos were made by Schreiber in Germany, later ones were made by Selmer USA. King never made their own plastic clarinets.
So the first one’s out of the way, what’s next? Sifting through the pile I decided to take care of the dirtiest one: A King Tempo, from around 1975-76.