A question about Leblanc from Sweden

Dear Mr Friedland

I am the swedish clarinetplayer looking for “the ultimate horn”.
I am now having sent to me a LeBlanc L 300. I had one in the mid 80´s. Unfornutately I traded it for a golden Pete Fountain Clarinet.I preferred my new Selmer 10 S.
Now many years later I am getting second thoughts about that.
I hope that you can tell me something about the L300.
To it seems that i did not stay for long on the market.

Sincerely

L K
Sweden

Dear Mr K:
The Leblanc L7 is a mid-1980’s high level professional grade clarinet. Alongwith the Leblanc LL, L200 and L300 of the same period they are highly regarded instruments , some saying that they’re perhaps the best clarinets ever produced by Leblanc. The L27 is also another excellent Leblanc from approximately the same time. Th L300 was in production 1982 until 1987. All of the above named Leblanc clarinets were excellent, I owned an L27 and a set of L7s which I felt were especially good clarinets. The LL is of course the most highly considered and the most produced of the Leblanc professional line. I have one LL now , perhaps the best Leblanc I’ve played. If you can purchase one of these Leblancs, you must make sure that they were not rebored by the Leblanc US company in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Many of these were rebored without real knowledge of what the results would be as the purpose was to bring forth a clarinet with a “big sound”. But the jobs of reboring was done using the wrong sized reamers and without real concern, resulting in a clarinet with intonation which had been scuttled by the process. Upon examination the bore must be shiny and unmarked. If there are rough edges to be seen it could very well be a reboring and one should overlook this instrument.
Sherman Friedland