I know, wrong instrument, sorry. But my wife wants to learn how to play the clarinet, and in fact, Klezmer style. Does anyone know if I can buy (and where) a good wooden clarinet in Bb for only a few hundred euros?
Thanks! Shane
[Moved from Flute Forum to World/Folk Winds. - Mod.]
For a beginner I think plastic will do (less potential problems and cheaper)
Get a Buffet B12 or equivalent Yamaha, both available from just about any music shop.
You are looking at about 800E for a good new wooden clarinet (Buffet E13).
Woodwind.org has a bulletin board that has a classified section that sometimes has some great deals. There doesn’t appear to be much there at the moment. I would also recommend John Butler’s site. He restores instruments and I highly recommend him for hie fine work. He does have a King Lemaire for sale at this time that has been restored and is selling for $295. If you were to get in touch with him I know he could be of some help to you. I have had more than one clarinet done by him and his work is flawless.
Just as important as the instrument - the mouthpiece.
A good bet is the Vandoren 5RV Lyre - but I admit I’m
a bit out of touch. Get some advice from a qualified clarinet
teacher because with a bad mouthpiece she has no hope,
no matter how good the instrument is.
the 5RV is a good general mouthpiece, once you have an embouchure and some klezmer repertoire you may want to move onto a mouthpiece with more potential for note bending, Selmer C* or similar. These mouthpieces are a bit too tricky for a beginner to control.
The mouthpiece that Buffet (and Yamaha) include with their new clarinets are both ok for getting started.
Klezmer players tend to use C clarinets, preferably Albert-system. You occasionally see them on Ebay, but they usually need a bit of refurb.
I play with a local klez group and use a Turkish Albert-system G clarinet for preference - it’s a large group and that way I can play lower in the mix, in an alto region that I mostly have to myself. Playing in typical klezmer flat keys on a G clarinet isn’t always easy, though.
At the other extreme I’ve got an E flat clarinet I intend (once I’ve got it fixed) to use for a few tunes, which will let me play way over the top of everybody else. But you’d need to have a pretty odd lineup for that to make sense as a primary instrument.
While true that the C clarinet has advantages such as not needing to transpose into Bb and many of the older players like Brandwein played them, while taking Klezmer lessons myself I found many scores are quite often already transcribed and only one person I met even owned a C clarinet. I think you will find many professional players such as Krakauer play, and teach, using a Bb instrument. A Bb clarinet will most certainly work for your purposes and will probably be a better quality instrument and in better shape than a C clarinet that were mostly made for marching bands way back when. The selection will also be much greater. I would check with your prospective teacher first to see what they use, especially if it is Albert system instead of Boehm system.
Proper attire can also be crucial. 
If Dave Tarras was the “Benny Goodman” of Klezmer, one can say that Naftule Brandwein was a kind of a “Charlie Parker”, a genius with a wild life, the King of Klezmer.
Brandwein was quite an eccentric and imaginative fellow, sometimes while performing on stage he was wearing a neon sign showing “Naftule Brandwein Orchestra” around the neck
On other occasions he appeared with an Uncle Sam costume adorned with light bulbs garland and almost electrocuted himself to death because of excessive perspiration.
From : http://www.clarinet-klezmer.com/Naftule-Brandwein-The-King-Of-Klezmer.html