Modernicus, your Evette Shaffer clarinet looks beautiful! Does yours also have the Buffet style serial number stamped on it? I would need to dig mine out of storage, but if I recall it was stamped with a Buffet style serial number that dated mine to I believe 1899. Otherwise the markings appear to be identical to the markings on mine. I always wanted to find a Buffet integrated barrel clarinet from the same period to compare the key work to prove conclusively that it was produced in the Buffet factory, but at the time was unable to come up with a Buffet model with the integrated barrel.
I agree to a degree the integrated barrel clarinets had some issues, especially with cracks in the upper end, but I would also say that my Martel Freres example with integrated barrel dated roughly 1900, exhibited some very interesting characteristics in regards to the bore of the clarinet. I think a lot of experimentation was done, especially with bore in these early integrated barrel clarinets, that later made much nicer sounding clarinets by 1915 in mass produced models. From what little information I could find on the Martel Brothers, their clarinets were of the highest quality, very few were produced, and each was played and hand tuned in their shop before leaving by the brothers themselves. I am a firm believer that whether it was an integrated barrel or standard barrel, the sound and playability had as much to do with the manufacture and care that was put into the building of the clarinet. I think even by 1900 there were very few of the small manufacturers like the Martel Brothers & Drausin Laube that had not gone the route of mass production of instruments. I also believe that once this shift was made to mass production the quality of clarinets dropped exponentially. I was very lucky to have found my Martel Brothers & Drausin Laube clarinets, which both happen to be integrated barrel, the Martel in Bb & the Laube in C. Ironically, I purchased both of these clarinets in France, and both date to the late 1890's to early 1900's. The Laube was probably made in the last year or two before he retired from instrument building and sold his business to Ferdinad Chaplain (who unfortunately was mass producing clarinets for the American market under various names, and did use the Laube name on mass produced clarinets). I think the last clarinets that were made by the Martel Brothers themselves were built somewhere between 1910 -1915 before they both had retired or died. My research was very sketchy as to what happened to the Martel Brothers shop after the 2nd brother died, but guessing it was purchased by another builder, though to my knowledge no clarinets were ever mass produced bearing the Martel Freres name on them.
Granted, these integrated barrel clarinets are probably not ever going to be widely played in orchestra's today, but when one looks very closely at them and really studies them, it becomes more apparent the experimentation that the makers were doing with these helped design and make the modern clarinet a more enjoyable instrument to listen to. I tend to think a majority of the integrated barrel clarinets built in the period from 1895-1905 were more on the lines of "hand" built than mass production line models, especially the higher quality ones. Not impossible to find even today, but very few of these integrated examples stood the test of time, as I stated earlier, upper end cracks were the norm in these integrated models, and most were discarded over the years, but I do find it ironic that the ones that have endured for over 100 years, usually are a little nicer sounding and seem to be built just a little better than their counterparts. Just my opinion, I think every collector should go out of their way add at least a one or two of these to their collection and compare them side by side with other clarinets, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Modernicus you get yours re-padded, I would be curious to see how yours sounds, unfortunately mine was cleaned up, oiled and put into storage a few years ago, mostly because I already had a handful of integrated barrel clarinets and at the time didn't have the time or desire to completely go through mine, though it may make it's way out of storage in the near future!
