Good morning, Gents! It's been a while.
I am the seller of said McIntyre.
Just to clarify, I am nigh certain that the pads are original, despite the fact that, as you correctly surmise, Noneyet, it has not been in my possession since new. Your speculation is entirely fair, but if I may, I'll offer the following for your consideration:
I am an experienced collector and restorer, and have extensive experience from years of exposure and examination in determining the relative age of a pad from it's materials, and state of decomposition.
In freeing a screw, most restorers do not have the patience or forethought to soak the threads ahead of time, in expectation of stiction. While some screws come out easily, there are always a few one has to fight. When fighting a flat head screw that has not been appropriately prepped for removal, the technician will "swage" the drive head, distorting it to some degree.
None of the adjustment and retention screws show any wear, whatsoever, indicating the high likelihood that keys have never been removed. There are no tool marks or scratches on any of the keys from scraping, there is no pad-cup adhesive overflow from fitment of new pads, or any of the other common indicators like abrasion marks in the finish, razor scuffs on the key flats where regulation cork rests, and all of the pads match, identically. While the expert craftsman could prevent all of these aforementioned damages, the likelihood is extremely slim, given the entirety of things to examine.
Additionally, all of the key and tenon corks (with exception to the aforementioned replaced one) are original, and all similarly deteriorated.
No technician worth his weight in salt would leave an old cork in place to do a re-pad, when it is so easy to service them then, and a technician who was NOT worth his weight in salt would have left indicators of tampering and crude barbarism behind, in some form. I can find none.
No; this one is virginal. This is part of the reason why I felt constantly compelled never to touch it, myself, even though I am very careful, and a re-pad/re-cork would have been an easy enough task for me. And I certainly would not have trusted it to just any professional, either, as most wouldn't know how to handle the advanced mechanism, or take good enough notes in the disassembly process in order to preserve functionality. In my mind, I could only ever diminish the value of it by meddling.
Perhaps the saving grace for this clarinet was its relative complexity, and the fear it instilled in the ham-fisted mechanic. Also, due to their relative rarity and conversational appeal, I suspect that most would care not whether it played, but that it remained intact.
It is a different enough system that the casual player likely would not be bothered paying for a restoration when they likely wouldn't play it anyway.
Just my .02, but I stand by it fully.
Cheers-
