Klarinet Archive - Posting 000114.txt from 1997/03

From: Karl Krelove <kkrelove@-----.COM>
Subj: A Clarinet bores (was: barrels)
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 21:24:15 -0500

At 01:50 AM 3/3/97 EST, you wrote:
>This is correct. Have you ever noticed that your A clarinet is more
>resistant than your Bb? This is, no doubt, a result of the smaller bore.

I've often wondered about this. I have always theorized, with no
scientific evidence to cite at all, that the reason an A Clarinet is
normally made with a smaller bore was to avoid having to lengthen the
instrument body (and therefore the tone hole/finger spacings) any more than
necessary. The reason for this would presumably be a less drastic change
for the player's fingers when switching instruments. If an A clarinet were
made longer with a correspondingly larger bore diameter so that the pitch
of the instrument were still correct, would the resulting instrument play
more freely than most modern A clarinets do? Or would the additional
resistance over what we get from a normal Bb clarinet still be there, now
because of greater air volume that needs to be moved?
I guess the ultimate direction of this question is to ask whether for the
price of a little more hand stretch (or maybe some additional mechanical
linkages to reach where my fingers wouldn't) I could in theory end up with
an A clarinet that doesn't fight back as hard as most do? Have there been
experiments in this direction?