Horns

Sometimes I think that amateurs acquire equipment in inverse proportion to their skill. A mediocre amateur photographer might have a dozen cameras. An unskilled aspirant to gourmet cookery might clutter his kitchen with expensive pots, pans, knives, and other paraphernalia.
So it is that I own four saxophones and two clarinets, as well as an electronic wind instrument, plus a bunch of ethnic instruments, drums, and recorders. If I were really good, I would own, let's say, one saxophone and a back up horn, or a B flat and an A clarinet, and that would be enough.
There are of course experts who also collect the tools of their trade. I remember reading that Eric Clapton has a massive number of guitars, and I have heard that the virtuoso, versatile reed player James Carter owns an impressive array of instruments. So owning too many instruments isn't necessarily an indication that one isn't a skilled player.
My main instrument is now the baritone saxophone, a huge, heavy, clumsy instrument, which is such a pain in the ass to bring to places where I am expected to play, that I wonder how I ever got involved with it.
Gerry Mulligan was the first musician I ever heard of who played the baritone sax, but I wasn't a fan of his when I was first getting enthusiastic about jazz, back in the late fifties when most of the gods of jazz were still alive. Sonny Rollins and his tenor were what swept me off my feet.
Many years later, in Israel, a few years after I took up music again, and I had acquired a brand new Yanagisawa tenor, a friend of mine invited me to play a couple of times with a saxophone quartet that needed to include a second tenor on a couple of pieces, and I met up with a real live bari player. I was distinctly uninterested in the instrument and wondered why anyone would choose to play one.
However, in the late 1980s I was playing tenor saxophone in a short-lived amateur bigband, and there was no baritone player, and at the same time I heard of a musician who had decided to sell his baritone, so I decided to buy it. I overpaid for his mediocre quality Italian horn (a Grassi), but I got to like playing the instrument, and a few years later I decided to treat myself to a really excellent baritone (a Selmer Super-Action 80, for those who are involved in that sort of thing). My father had died, and I was sad. I needed something new in my life to perk me up, and he left me some money, so I could afford the instrument (good baritone saxophones are not cheap). And, it turns out, not-s0-good baritone saxophones are hard to sell. I was stuck with that Grasssi for quite a while.
As I mentioned, I own a bunch of other instruments, including a decent alto saxophone (Selmer Mark VII) and a classic vintage Conn tenor (my wonderfully generous cousins Lewis and Ellen gave it to me when Ellen's father grew too demented to play anymore), as well as a decent clarinet (my second clarinet is a Turkish metal G clarinet that is more of a novelty than an instrument that I can play), and I feel that I owe it to the instruments to play them now and then. What's a sadder object than a musical instrument that no one plays?
Individual musicians have their own personalities, which are expressed in their playing, and every instrument has its own personality. Not only does every type of instrument have a personality (trombones versus violas, let's say), but each individual acoustic instrument has a special character. So what comes out is always a blend: the musician's personality expressed through the instrument's personality. For example, Eric Dolphy, who played alto sax, flute, and bass clarinet, was always Eric Dolphy, but each instrument enabled him to express a different aspect of his protean musicality.
To step down from the Elysian Fields, where Eric Dolphy is still playing, I hope, recently I have been playing clarinet a little more frequently than in the past, and it's taking me a while to feel comfortable on the instrument, and I don't yet have a clarinet me. The lowest note on the B flat clarinet is a concert D below middle C, and the lowest note on the baritone sax is almost an octave below that. The clarinet is an agile instrument, the baritone sax is kind of elephantine. Their expressive potential is different.
The problem is that it's so much easier for me to play sax than clarinet, that I tend to avoid the challenge and settle back into the place where I feel comfortable. My music guru, the late Arnie Lawrence, used to say that you shouldn't keep doing what you're already good at, if you want to progress. That's something to keep in mind.