The french clarinet specialist Leblanc was granted at least two USA patents concerning saxophones. The first, 1840456, in 1932 and the other one, 3136200, in 1964. |
Drawings from both the 1840456 and the 3136200 USA patents. |
Both patents concern the layout of the saxophone's mechanism. When turning to the saxophone market, Leblanc did not hesitate to make daring choices: they didn't, as everyone else did (and does), just copy their competitors' designs, but were inventive enough to come up with their own. Moreover, the Leblanc saxophone is accurately made, meeting standards that, to be honest, are more common in clarinets and flutes than in saxophones. I compiled the drawings on the right from the original patents, stitching as it were separate drawings of right hand and left hand key stacks together and deleting superfluous information, like the palm and most side keys. For clarity, both drawings were coloured.
The Londeix system for defining fingerings is used. |
The saxophone built according to these patents Leblanc called «le Rationnel», 'the Logical'. Both the body and the mechanism of this instrument is made out of solid nickel silver. Not shown in the above drawings, the instrument has palm keys up to high-G, like the Ad. Sax 40842 alto saxophone. These keys are fully interlinked, facilitating trills once more. The instrument, again like the the Ad. Sax 40842 alto and like so many contemporairy german saxophones, also had a separate key for a middle C#-D. And finally there is a third key for the little finger right hand to obtain a 'one-finger low-C#'. This latter mechanism was constructed in such a way that a low-B could be obtained starting from this 'one-finger low-C#' adding only a little finger left hand for the B itself; very convenient indeed! However, a technical drawback is that the mechanism was constructed in a cumbersome way and doesn't feel very slick.
But the instrument, although once cheaper than a Selmer Mark6, was no commercial succes and most probably more complicated to build than to buy. Leblanc also made a somewhat simpler version, called the 'semi-Rationnel'. This instrument retained the main key stacks of it's full sized brother, but it had palm keys up to high F# only and it had to go without the 'one-finger low-C#' mechanism. The picture shows such a semi-Rationnel. Its mechanism, although functionally equivalent with the proposals in both patents, is yet not entirely similar. An original letter dated september 16th, 1994, from Leblanc to a former owner states that this instrument, serial number 221, was built in 1937. They add that only 122 instruments of this [semi-Rationnel] type were made.
Please note that the peculiar layout of the right hand side plateau [Ta, Tc, middle-D and C3] looks a lot like the side plateau of the Ad. Sax 40842 alto [Ta, middle-D, C3 and C6], which again suggests that Leblanc might have studied Sax's instrument itself.