The "Harry"

[Windsong]

Fascinating, Airflyte.  My very good friend is Italian, and lives near this area.  Whilst he's not a woodwind player (but a fantastic acoustic guitarist) I will share this with him, and see if he can dig up some folklore.
Thanks for sharing.

Alright Windsong, chew on this; http://woodwindshelp.weebly.com/uploads/2/3/7/9/23791000/italy_sax.pdf

I'm in the process of researching Orsi built instruments and found it very interesting - lots of connections were being made in Italy as well!

[Windsong]

Two, very similar 7 ring Harry Pedlers, together at last:

[Windsong]

The slideshow continues...

[Windsong]

There is a length discrepancy of 1/4" which is a lot, but they are both LP.  The new "The Pedler" has the shortest barrel I've ever seen on a LP Boehm Bb, at 61.5mm, but has a longer top joint by nearly 3/8" over the original "Harry".  The new "The Pedler" has matching serial numbers on top and bottom joints (5 digit with a preceeding letter: E19XXX)
and the keys are far more refined, but the design is unchanged, and the function--identical.  You will notice the spec keys are far more robust on the newer one, and the crow's foot substitute, too.  The keys are a brilliant high gloss nickel plate, over who-only-knows-what.  They appear to be forged, and the newer one is noticably heavier.  The new one has a body that has absolutely no flaws--not even a scratch; not one.  All of the paint is clear and bright white in the stampings, and the case looks nearly new.  The clarinet has very little wear to the keys, and I am glad to have been able to procure two, nearly identical clarinets.  They will make, despite their clear differences, good bedfellows, and I intend to restore them both, and will consider the notion to build them a double case, or find a good vintage one.  They deserve that, as they derive from the same lineage, I think.

[Silversorcerer]

Now that's what I'm talking about.  Check out how nicely fitted the keywork is on those lower joints. That precision fitting rivals the French makers. That area of the lower joint is one of the first things I look at on a clarinet. The professional Pedler clarinets have some of the sturdiest keys and at the same time a flowing elegance that belongs to the early 20th C.

And then there is the obvious thing that these have that few others have, and most of those are probably Pedler stencils;- the Pedler "appliance", which allows an easy adjustment to synchronize the LH5 key cluster. I always dread messing with a crow's foot. It's the worst part of the Boehm design. Harry solved it and practically the only maker doing something similar now is Peter Eaton.

What you will see with many makers is that during the time from 1920 to about 1935, the barrel got shorter while the upper joint got longer. In general the length from the tip of the mouthpiece to the register vent is preserved while this design change happened. It's one reason that it is important to have the original barrels and not to make any automatic decisions when a barrel looks too long or too short. If it is original, it's that way because it's the total length of the upper added to the barrel that is important.

[Windsong]

I will agree that the French makers of the time had nothing on Harry Pedler save, perhaps post locks on very few models.  The precision with which the keys glide, side by side, is nothing short of genius.  And it works, quite wonderfully.  Action is quick and precise, with no hinderance to aesthetic appeal, which is, among American manufacturers of the time, rather ahead of its time.
Conn deserves better than his last hurrah.  He enabled the best of the best to develop and thrive.  He was a champion of optimal design--even if the artists became his competition, and I don't know if the world really appreciates this fact.
Oh, to be be a fly on the wall in the breakroom 100 years ago...

[Windsong]

I'd be interested to find a serial number chart for Pedler clarinets, if anyone may have a lead.

[Silversorcerer]

I'd be interested to find a serial number chart for Pedler clarinets, if anyone may have a lead.

Perhaps we should start a thread similar to the Penzel Mueller serial thread? We have enough information to know when certain events in the history occur. We know the early Harry Pedler soprano clarinets were not serialized, at least not the rubber ones. I've never seen a wooden one so I don't know about those except that the bass models, all four that I have seen do have serials. The altos might also.

Typically what I have found is that there are a few different letter codes preceding a numerical sequence. It is very much like the Penzel Mueller scheme. An "E" letter code appears to designate ebonite, an "A" letter code appears to designate an American model, a "P" code appears to designate The Pedler or Premiere model, and a W appears to designate a model with some special feature, such as the appliance feature which was not broadly used during the Martin BIC years.

I didn't expect much quick success on the Penzel Mueller serial database, but in just a couple of years of adding serials there are over a hundred and now we have a reasonably effective way to estimate time of manufacture by the serial and where it is placed on the instrument. I think we could easily do the same for Pedler. At first it was difficult to find the PM serials and now almost all the sellers are posting them in the listings. We have helped them and now they are helping us. 

[Windsong]

Not a bad idea, at all.
There has been some interest in similar information on Saxontheweb, but nothing definitive, and another bloke on a brasswind forum in March of 2017 has attempted the same for "H. Pedler and sons", but I have never seen that stamp on a clarinet, and brasswinds most assuredly had their own numbering systems.
As I only have 2 with serial numbers, we will all need to combine forces to stock up serial numbers, and determine whether each letter, indicating composition had its own serial number sequence, or whether the numbers were the serial sequence, and the letters were just added to differentiate composition.

[Silversorcerer]

With the Penzel Muellers, most of the serials I gathered from ebay listings. A good number also came from members here. By far the largest number of Pedler serials is also those that come through ebay. So we can collect them and update the list over time. I just updated the PM list a few days ago. I know I missed some being off the web a couple of months, but to get a good number and establish the sequencing just requires a small fraction of the production numbers.

I'm going to let you do this one but I will help you collect the serials. I've recorded a few of them that were interesting or seemed to offer clues and I have a decent handful of Pedlers myself.

[Windsong]

Fair enough, indeed.
I'll whip up a dedicated thread.

[Windsong]

Good evening, folks. 
This afternoon, my most recent Harry Pedler aquisition arrived:  An Albert system Model 1544, Bb in Low Pitch, and complete. I found it, scouring for the originals.  Inexplicably, I have recently rekindled my interest in this forgotten brand, whereas I lost steam a couple of years back, having been unable to accomplish what I had set out to do;  come up with a definitive timeline.  I doubt I ever will, but I still greatly appreciate the dark, rich sound of these old birds, and the simple, clever craftsmanship.  There is simply nothing like them.

Photos were at best, mediocre, and communication with the seller proved fruitless, so having determined the basics, I figured I'd take a chance.  From the photos, I could see that it had Harry's earliest keywork, original diamond pattern logo, wraparound register key, and a double case, and for $75.00, delivered, I felt that was a decent price for a now rare, priceless clarinet that appeared to be easily restorable, and a good stablemate for my model 152 (2-ring), which I love to play.

Thus far, it appears as though, aside from needing to straighten a couple RH index trills, it may also be a fine player.  Characteristically, it differs from my other 1919-1923 Harry Pedlers in that it is stamped "B LP" on both joints.  Since I have never seen or heard of a HP Harry Pedler, I assume this was done simply to allow for quick identification by those new to the brand, but perhaps Harry Pedler may have made a few HP models?  In any event, I was a glad recipient today.  Interesting is that no two of my Harrys have identical network.  Even the keywork which seems interchangeable is not identical.  All of the keys are different, and hand ground.  This seems so laborious, to have someone (or several someones) hand grind, polish, and fit keys, when production of the moulding process could have been advanced to minimize such discrepancies, as nearly every other manufacturer had done by this time period.  Certainly, once Martin BIC took over, the network was nigh identical, year to year, and across the model spectrum.
Perhaps this is why I enjoy these old Harrys so much.  They are like snowflakes.

It will be some time before I have the opportunity to restore this one, but I have saved one more, perhaps, from becoming a prop on the wall of a greasy spoon chain restaurant, somewhere.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Harry-Pedler-Clarinet-w-Case-Accessories-UNTESTED-/383696840041?pageci=d597a1a3-ddb2-4271-9f75-62b2648feecc#vi__app-cvip-panel