Henri Alexandre Clarinet

nbezaire

Hello,

Recently I had a teacher bring in a clarinet that I hadn't seen before, and I'm just wondering if anyone can tell me the history of the model.

It has "Henri Alexandre - Paris_France - Artist" stamped on top joint, bottom joint, and bell. It's a wood clarinet, and - I'm not sure if they're original - metal resonators in the bottom joint pads.

I did find history on Alexandre clarinets, Henri Selmer clarinets, but nothing specifically on Henri Alexandre. From my understanding they're the two Selmer brothers, each developed instruments and for a time developed them together but usually named under "Alexandre" or "Henri Selmer".

I don't know if this is a special horn, or if it's a knock off that used those names. It seemed to be of pretty decent quality, had a nice sound. If anyone has seen one of these clarinets or heard of them before that'd be great :)

Here's a link with some pictures of the horn:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nbezaire/sets/72157629421924991/
 
I think it is a Malerne stencil.

If the top pad cup arm of the lower joint ring keys is curved upwards then that would be a primary indicator of a Malerne stencil - I cannot 100% confirm from the pictures.

Henri and Alexandre are apparently very common french names.

Malerne was a stencil for a slew of large & small makers and possibly one-off makers. There's a list somewhere of stencil names, which is quite large.
 
SteveSklar said:
There's a list somewhere of stencil names, which is quite large.
Click to expand...
It's someplace at sneezy.org. The problem is, however, that a distributor/dealer might not always use the same company for stencilage -- and some stencil names are just way too common. My favorite is still "Acme." I'd buy one of those for the name, alone. Just like I'll buy the first operating system that happens to be called "Honey Badger" (trust me; the 5 people on the forum that get that reference are laughing).
 
This reminds me of my Symphonie Artiste - Malerne clarinet.

Of course "Symphonie" is a well known name used by Leblanc. Thus one's first indication is to think it was a Leblanc. Matter of fact, there was an ebay auction over a year ago where the seller was stating that it was in fact a Leblanc clarinet and asking $1700 or something way out there for it.

Too bad it was a Malerne stencil. Even has a Malerne serial number.

They ignored my input to correct them about it not being a Leblanc. Probably because they had too much money invested in it to sell it for $100 or so.

I bought my Symphonie Artiste back in 1996ish or so from craigslist with that same idea, that it must be a Leblanc. But it didn't look like a Leblanc. Didn't have the high quality keywork of a Leblanc or the stepped trill keys like all of the old Leblancs after WWII and had thicker ring keys, weird serial number and other indicators that it was NOT a Leblanc and actually a student instrument. The only thing it looked like was a student Clarinet.

After extensive research (ok, a little at a time) over many, many years I came to find out that the Symphonie Artiste was a Malerne which was resold by Sears back in the earlier days when they sold instruments. Back in the days when they had a gigantic catalog of everything that they sold (pre internet days). I believe other Malerne models were sold by Montgomery Ward and similar stores.

Of course, at that time actually having a Malerne and seeing that they were practically identical in all forms and fashion I had to realize that it was a Malerne. how ironic to have a Malerne to exactly match the Symphonie Artiste.

Thus there are many stencils out there of unheard of names. I've only come across maybe 3 Symphonie Artiste clarinets. You would think Sears would have sold a ton of them and they would pop up every so often but how many people would actually go to Sears and buy a clarinet versus a music store back in the day?

So think about that ... 3 in 15+ years


interesting ... they are still trying to sell that Marlene / Sears Symphonie Artiste though the price is down to $875 BIN
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Fre...ARTISTE-LeBlanc-/290596516262#ht_18056wt_1093


I wonder how much in eBay fees they have been paying ?


fyi, I paid $70 for it back in 1996ish. I think it is maybe worth about $50 now ... maybe, assuming someone wanted to buy it :/
Maybe I should just send it to Switzerland ...
 
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SteveSklar said:
fyi, I paid $70 for it back in 1996ish. I think it is maybe worth about $50 now ... maybe, assuming someone wanted to buy it :/
Maybe I should just send it to Switzerland ...
Click to expand...

At the rate they're coming in I should really find a source for those compact Yamaha-style hard shell cases...
 
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