If you go to the primary 2nd-hand selling site, there is an option at the top of the page to "shop by brand", and of course they only give you three choices. There are good used and vintage instruments made by those brands, but the way it is presented is as if those are the only brands of clarinets that ever existed. Vintage is a whole different category. My approach is to ignore those 3 brands because I realize that everyone else is being directed to them. I'm picking in a different orchard entirely.
I am sure that the band directors and "educators" in general are quite responsible, if not accountable. Add the peer pressure factor that determines most student choices and it's down to which company has the best PR department. It was the same when I was a kid. We all had Conn Director cornets, saxs, and trombones in my beginning band class. A couple of kids had other instruments. If it was something old, they were made to feel like lepers. Old was definitely not "cool" during the 1960s. And generally the older instruments that a school owned would not be in good repair so the lack of proper repair and maintenance reinforced the idea that new was always better.
And the band directors are too young now to remember any of these old instruments and lost brands. If I were a band director, I'd be nearing retirement.
One of my friend's kids had a Bachinese trumpet fail on him and I looked it over and thought that it was not really worth fixing. I gave that child an instrument that cost me less than the repairs his needed to play again, if it could even be fixed. It took a pencil point dent in a valve casing and that was it;- frozen valve. A Conn Director might have been scratched by something like that, but not ruined. So I set the kid up with a 1961 Conn Director with the Coprion bell. His band director had never even seen one and was quite impressed.
The young band directors have no idea that these are commonly available and of course all of the later student horns are so poorly built that the assumption is that any instrument that is old must be worn out. All it takes is the typical disparaging snob comments that other students with new vanilla instruments make on web forums and the vintage market becomes primarily the territory of collectors.
So I am thinking now, what would the reaction be of a band director if a student came in with this 3* plateau clarinet in a generic black zipper case for first year band? It's Bakelite and hard rubber, so it looks very similar to the plastic clarinets. And it looks brand new. "Hmmm. I see you have a ... Three Star?
(it doesn't even say Bettoney on it anywhere) Is that something you bought on the internet?" "No, my Mom got it from the Silversorcerer....
" "Well, yes that looks very nice.... But the keys, they look;- let me see that...."
"No, Susie! If I let you use that one it would be like cheating!" Which is entirely my point. This one is the "head start" model.
Go, Susie, go! "Susie, I think your instrument is defective. Every time I use the C# side key it moves the Eb ring key....." "Well, yes Mr. B.D, that's a defect patented about a century ago....."
I could see why a band director would favor the common flavor;- and it is mostly a selfish reason.
I remember one older cornet in my first year that belonged to Cathy Jackson and it had belonged to her grandfather. It was French and it was raw brass and heavily engraved. It was probably from the 1920s or 1930s but we all thought it was ancient in 1971. It was probably a good instrument, but Cathy got a Conn for Christmas;- so she would have one like everyone else. Even then my Conn Director was ten years older than most of them and had a factory re-fresh done on it. Mine was like new but about 3/4 the price. It had nickel highlights. I could spot it among the rest of them because of the nickel details. Those nickel on brass details of my first cornet could be why I favor your two-tone trademarks.
Almost all of the flutes and clarinets were Bundy. One girl had a Selmer clarinet that was made of wood and we all thought that was pretty old fashioned. It also had the old style hard wooden box case. If a company could get in good with both the major local music store and the school board, the sales of new instruments were a foregone conclusion. Does it work the same way now? Everything is the same except there are fewer band programs, fewer students, and fewer brands of instruments. It has become a binary marketplace. If there are more than two choices, it's too confusing.
One day I want to be a band director. And if you want to play, you must have an instrument older than your parents. It can be any brand except brand new. That would save them enough money to pay me to restore their instruments.
