Selmer Signature A Clairnet
The Signature represents the newest and flagship model in the Selmer family. The .575" bore possesses a uniquely compact, centered and focused voice. The softest pianissimo can be produced almost effortlessly and maintains a uniform, homogeneous sound over the entire range and at all dynamic levels. Accurate intonation, particularly the treacherous throat E to high B and throat F to high C intervals, results from detailed bore proportion, precise reaming, and exact tone hole size, position and undercutting. The Signature's Streamline design contributes to its quick response.
American clarinet players have struggled with a perplexing problem for several generations, showing a decided proclivity for the round, dark, fullness of the German clarinet tone but being equally and deeply attached to the French mechanism and facility. What to do? For such a dilemma the Selmer Signature offers the only real solution. While being more coloristic than any German clarinet, the Signature has the most beautiful, round, mellow, velour-like tone quality I have ever heard from a clarinet. It has a truly dark, covered upper clarion register (as covered as any Wurlitzer) with no thinning or metallic quality in the sound whatsoever; just pure beauty. A unique voice equal to that of the greatest singers.
Selmer designers have been able to build this dark, covered, round tone into the Signature by using a concept of resistance displacement similar to that found in the best German clarinets. Specifically, the positive resistance that defines the tone is placed primarily in the bore/tone hole design of the clarinet, allowing the clarinetist to build greater flexibility in the mouthpiece/reed/embouchure recipe without danger of bright, thin high tones or shrillness at louder dynamics. Such a concept stands completely opposite of that traditionally found in the dominant French model in America for the past two generations, where players are always trying to create resistance to cover up the inherent harshness of higher tones.
The Signature's positive resistance also provides agility. Arpeggios, wide intervals and leaps, lightening fast scales, and difficult technical passages practically bubble out of the horn without responding sluggish, slack, or uneven, and with a clearness and clarity not found in other clarinets. One can tear through technical passages and the most difficult etudes with confidence and panache as the air stream moves as smoothly and evenly through the clarinet as a warm knife through butter. The Signature's efficiency makes previously impossible technical passages possible, and the possible ones easier.