Klarinet Archive - Posting 000586.txt from 2000/12

From: "Kevin Fay (LCA)" <kevinfay@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Tuning
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 19:32:01 -0500

Bill Hausmann asked:

<<<I still can't help but wonder -- if all these aftermarket guys know all
the tricks to make these horns work better, why can't the original
manufacturers figure them out?>>>

Tony Gigliotti asked this a number of years ago. As the story goes, the
Selmer 10G was an effort to replicate Mr. G's Buffet after it had been
tweaked up by Hans Moennig. This and other things are supposed to have led
to Mr. Moennig's refusal to work on Selmers.

I suspect that one reason is money. Hand finishing -- especially by
craftspeople with the skill of Bill Brannen, Bob McDonald, Stephen Fox and a
number of the fine people who regularly post to the list -- is not cheap.
If Buffet/Selmer/Leblanc/Yamaha were to pay equally skilled craftspeople to
hand finish each instrument to the same standard, the clarinets would be
considerably more expensive. There's a reason that the street price of the
typical factory-made clarinet is less than what Luis Rossi, Guy Chadash,
Peter Eaton, Howarth or Stephen Fox produces; I bet it's not just a volume
discount on the wood.

To be sure, many folks want the extra attention. (I myself toyed with the
idea of having my old reliable R-13 spiffed up this past summer, but we had
another kid instead.) For the vast majority of players, though, the horns
are just fine as they come from the factory.

It's another question entirely as to why the factory makers wouldn't
incorporate a *design* change that would improve the instrument. I'm not
sure that they wouldn't -- isn't Buffet supposed to have slipstreamed many
design changes over the years? More likely that there is a difference of
opinion over whether the change is an improvement or not.

Even if there is a known improvement, people may not buy it. Take the
venerable R-13. Buffet has known for quite some time that moving the
register key a couple of millimeters closer to the mouthpiece would reduce
the stretched intonation of the 12ths. In the 1970's they sold a clarinet
styled the S-1 that had this fix. Unfortunately, not many people bought
them. You can get a higher register key placement on several Buffet models
today, including the Festival and (I think) the Prestige, but the R-13
remains far and away the more popular model here in the U.S. Go figure.

kjf

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