Klarinet Archive - Posting 000300.txt from 2000/11

From: "David B. Niethamer" <dnietham@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Ligaphone repair
Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2000 23:49:12 -0500

on 11/5/00 10:11 AM, Charles Schneider wrote:

>- I have read than some clarinetists made modifications on their Bonade.
>What is this modification? Is it to just let it press only on the nodal
>points of
>the reed , something like that ? Where are they exatly ?

I have seen two modifications:

1.) cutting out the middle of the ligature (on the inverted Bonade -
obviously this is not possible on the model with the screws in front),
leaving only the rails that are behind the bands that go around the
mouthpiece. For me, this makes the response of neighboring notes very
uneven, but some clarinetists swear by it.

2.) taking a strip of cork and placing it between the rails (also only on
the inverted model). A further modification involves a thin sheet of cork
to go over the cork insert *and* the rails. Both of these modifications
mad my ligatures more responsive, but degraded the core and focus of the
sound in a more general way - not a useful thing for me.

I've recently gotten a BG metal ligature - mine is gold plated. I balked
at the price, but everyone I played it for likes it much better than my
Bonades, which I played for years in spite of experiments with every
other ligature under the sun (except the Ligaphone!). I forget the exact
model, but it's the all metal one. It has "rails" similar to the Bonade,
but integrated into the formation of the ligature, instead of soldered on
like the Bonade. It has some sort of cork or fabric insert between the
rails as well. I heard one of the BG designers (at ClarinetFest, where I
bought it) tell another customer that it was designed to do what the
Bonade did, but without the necessity to solder on the rails. This
ligature also has only one screw at the rear of the ligature, situated
pretty far down the mouthpiece. I wonder what effect this is likely to
have on the concave table features of some mouthpieces. I'm not a
scientist, so I can't explain why it works, but for me it's a great
ligature.

David
(A confessed ligature junkie!)

David Niethamer
Principal Clarinet, Richmond Symphony
dnietham@-----.edu
http://members.aol.com/dbnclar1/

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