I have an interesting Italian made Robert Martel. Maybe a cousin? It has wooden joints and bakelite barrel and bell, all marked the same way as if original. And it has these lipstick red leather pads.
I'm thinking perhaps a Rampone stencil, but that's mostly because I don't know many Italian makers. Truly, made in Italy, as small as Italy's clarinet industry is, is always puzzling. And Italian clarinets for some reason have very short bells. I'm not sure what's up with that. It's one of those bizarre quirks like the Germans with that coat-hook thumb rest and the Czechs with their pointy key work. Anyway, I digress. Sure some of the French made some of the metal clarinets. I am not sure why though. It was the U.S. that was cut off from French imported grenadilla when the wars happened. Which leads me to speculate....
Does the Henri Martel have any country of origin marks? Harry Bettoney was notorious for stamping French sounding names on metal clarinets forged in Boston, Mass. Henri Dubois, Henry La Vella, Jean Lambert, L. Lebret, Leon Aubert, and no telling how many others are French names that were stamped on Bettoney metal clarinets Made In USA. One shocker in the pile is L. Lebret, who was a well known French maker himself. Secure is his supply of grenadilla from the African colonies, he apparently he jobbed out the metal work to Boston. And most of les Bettoneys have that stamped on them as well, the "Made In USA", which is almost a ghost signature Bettoney used, almost always appearing with the same font and capitalization. All of them have the Bettoney patented C#/Eb mechanism that will close the Eb hole when the C# side key is depressed. If it does that, it is a Bettoney and they made metal clarinets as early as the 1920s at least. If you have just one good photo of the bell engraving, I can most likely determine whether or not this Martel is la Bettoney. Without seeing it, I'd still bet in the Bettoney direction.
