Comes in the nice black case with the padded exterior, also in excellent condition.īy far the nicest vintage R13 you’ll find for sale right now, and practically impossible to find from the Golden Era with this keywork in this condition. Not every Buffet Clarinet qualifies to be sold by Rice Clarinet Works. One of the best-playing and best-sounding clarinets you’ll ever own.
Keys, rods, and screws ultrasonically cleaned, lubricated, and lost motion removed to nice, tight tolerances. Just had a masterful overhaul: All new cork pads on the upper and a combination of cork and white kangaroo leather on the lower. The nickel plating is in excellent condition, with the first layer of nickel just starting to show some wear on three of the spatula keys, but of course this is two layers of nickel over a layer of copper, and will be good for another 40 years.
Tenons are nice and tight, and it looks like sometime in its history a master technician installed an external metal ring on the middle tenon to square up the edges to prevent wobble between the joints. Exceptional billet of grenadilla with a nice, tight grain typical of the period, no chips, cracks or repairs, meticulously cleaned and treated with sweet almond oil. The old Fischer catalogs listed this variant as an R14-1/2-which was their designation rather than Buffet’s-but the model number is often still used, since it’s a lot easier than saying, “The R13 with 18 keys, 7 rings, articulated C#/G# and forked Eb/Bb.” Note that this is a true, polycylindrical R13, not a pre-R13 as is so often seen with this key work, and it’s by far the latest example of this that I’ve ever seen. It has some nice factory upgrades from the base model R13, including the articulated C#/G# to facilitate low B to C# trills and others, and a forked-Eb mechanism to allow the forked Eb fingering and additional trills and tremolos, and another extra trill key on the lower joint.
These clarinets are ideal for players looking for something slightly different then the traditional R13 sound and response.One of several Buffet Crampon clarinets we are selling! This one is an R13 in Bb with nickel plating, serial number 1384XX, 1973, making it right at the sweet spot in Buffet’s Golden Era. The Pre-R13 is going to be considered less focused in comparison to the modern R13.
Once this is complete all of the corks, felts and pads will be replaced followed by a professional regulation of the key work.Īt the time of its manufacture this was considered to be a top of the line professional clarinet. The restoration will include a dissemble, cleaning, oil treatment and polishing of the key work. It is due for some standard TLC and is currently in line to be mechanically restored in our shop. The last owner of the clarinet took good care of it over the years.
There is a small surface crack on the Buffet Barrel. This clarinet includes an original 66mm barrel and a blank after market barrel which measures 61mm. The nickel silver key work is also in nice condition. Looking over them closely the clarinet does not show any history of major past repair or crack repair. The condition of both body joints is excellent. This wood clarinet was manufactured in the late 1940's. This is a Buffet Pre-R13 model Bb clarinet, serial number 33333.