Klarinet Archive - Posting 000417.txt from 1996/02

From: Everett J Austin <BrendaA624@-----.COM>
Subj: Chadash clarinet barrel experience
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 04:46:02 -0500

A Chadash barrel experience:
A while back I saw "Chadash Barrels" in the Weiner Catalog and wondered about
their function. When I called Weiner Music in NYC to ask what these were
good for, the nice folks there did not seem to know, so I forgot about the
matter. Lately the barrels resurfaced in another context and I made their
acquaintance with gratifying results, with one barrel essentially converting
a pair of Buffet RCs into "new" instruments.
About three or four years ago after overhauling my R-13, Clark Fobes showed
me what a difference a barrel can make by supplying one his barrels tailored
to the instrument. I was quite pleased with the improvement in tone,
response and intonation and grateful for the favor. Since then I no longer
own an R13, though the daugther of a friend is quite happy with my old one.
I have a set of RCs which I actually like better than the R13s, but have
never had any luck in getting any other barrels to work to finesse the sound
and response, mainly for tuning reasons. In a search for a sound more like
Cahuzac (I wish!), a certain older French sound (the sort of thing David Pino
raves about in his book on the clarinet), I came upon the Gregory
Smith/Zinner mouthpieces and heard something a bit closer to that ideal but
with a certain thinness in the sound on the Bflat instrument. Greg suggested
contacting Guy Chadash (of the Buffet Chadash barrel) to see if a barrel
change would help, since he felt his mouthpieces match well with the Chadash
bore.
Mr Chadash understood the acoustical issues involved immediately and mailed
me out a 65 mm Bflat barrel to replace my 66mm stock one. (He had already
made this experiment at the Buffet factory, evidently.) It was like a new
instrument, with a fuller, ringing but slightly covered and uniform tone, and
playing it with piano and with strings just confirms the impression of a good
musical solution. The startling thing was that the very same barrel works
perfectly with the A clarinet, with the same improvements in timbre and
response while preserving good intonation and almost matching the resistance
of the Bflat. Chadash predicted this possibility ("if it works for both
you're a winner") correctly, which leads me to believe he knows what he is
doing! (He said the taper is "less radical" than the Moennig which
apparently makes it adaptable to both the RC and R13 bores.) I never found
any other barrel to have the same effect with the RC/RC Prestige (if the tone
or response improved it was invariably accompanied by intonation problems
necessitating a return to the original barrels).

I don't know if this same experience would apply to R13s but some earlier
comments in the list by David Bourque and others on and of the list suggest
that it may. Certainly, RC players and Greg Smith/Zinner mouthpiece users
should give this some thought (I found a parallel improvement with the
Morgans I have as well). The mouthpiece and barrel evidently act very much
as a unit and the taper of the barrel has to relate correctly to the upper
joint to give the best result, though I could not explain the quantitative
details further myself.

Sorry to go on about this so much, but it was such a revelatory experience
(though I am not a praying man) and has added greatly to the joy of playing,
that I thought it well to share it.

Maintenant, a la recherche d'une anche vraiment bonne... T'en connais?

Everett Austin
Fairfax, California