Klarinet Archive - Posting 000214.txt from 1993/12

From: Cary Karp <nrm-karp@-----.SE>
Subj: Re: Harold Bennett and homogenization
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1993 17:47:46 -0500

There is no reason to expect a musician's or an instrument maker's
explanation of a complex physical phenomenon to be even vaguely correct.
After all, during the trillions of years the sun has be orbiting around the
earth there have been numerous widely accepted but completely erroneous
explanations for its actual mechanics. A phenomenon doesn't depend on an
individual's ability to describe it.

For the moment, however, let's give Harold Bennett the benefit of the
doubt, assuming that he's been quoted reasonably correctly:

> I once asked Bennett that and he said something like "The molecules of
> the wood have a tendency to gravitate to that level of instability
> they had achieved after the cutting, boring, shaving, etc. So you
> have to keep reminding them what position they really need to occupy."

There's just one problem with this -- if wood molecules tend to recover
to their pre-treatment positions, it stands to reason that they would
also tend to recover from the jostling they receive during the various
manufacturing processes. In fact, wood is not a homogeneous and stable
aggregate of ordered particles. Its structure is extremely complex with
all sorts of directional properties and a pretty good ability to
recover elastically from the type of trauma that being turned into a
clarinet entails.

I'll spare everyone the lecture on wood technology, since I doubt very
much that the back-room treatment had anything to do with the internal
structure of the wood. If the results had been permanent -- maybe -- but
since they weren't, I'd discount that possibility altogether.

What I would figure to be a more reasonable speculative explanation is
that the vibration treatment (if that's what it was) more resembled an
ultrasonic cleaning (ask a watchmaker, jeweler or your dentist for a
demonstration). All the gunk in the toneholes and pores of the wood gets
"shaken" out thereby reviving the thing -- and we do know that the
surface of the bore is a very important tonal determinant. One
gunkification period later and it's time for a new treatment.

There are other speculative explanations which don't require the existence
of metaphysical particles. Before droning on, though, how's about at
least a detailed qualitative description of the changes in the instrument
effected by the treatment. Did Bennett take the mouthpiece into the back
room, as well?