Klarinet Archive - Posting 000790.txt from 2001/10

From: Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Wooden bells
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 12:47:13 -0400

I wanted to share this with KLARINET because it has been bubbling around
in my head for about 20 years. It was that long ago that I was in
London on some business trip, I forget which. But while there I met and
spent considerable time with one of the UK's great bass clarinetists.
He was also (and still may be) one of the best basset horn players I
ever heard. His name was Steve Trier.

Anyway, at the time I was playing a traditional bass clarinet and owned
two basset horns, all three of which had metal bells. I never even
thought about anything else because that is the way they came. The fact
that a soprano clarinet had a wooden bell while bass clarinets and
basset horns (and probably alto clarinets, too, but I wouldn't know
about that first hand) had metal bells never really registered with me.

Anyway, in London, Steve Trier shared with me his experience with the
wooden bells he had made for his instruments by Ted Planas, who, I
believe, is deceased now. Steve sounded so stupendous I asked him what
effect did he think the wooden bells had on his sound. His answer was
unequivocal, stating that metal bells tended to reinforce certain sonic
characteristics that were undesireable.

I had no way to confirm or deny his assertion but was content simply to
think about it. Later I tried to get a wooden bell made for my bass
clarinet but the cost was incredibly prohibitive. Not only was the bell
itself expensive to make (and seriously expensive, too), but the
connection pieces needed from Selmer that would allow attachment were
even more expensive. I think it was something like $1,000 just for the
attachment pieces. I even bought a cheap metal bell in the hopes that I
could cannibalize it for the connection pieces but the whole think never
worked and I gave up.

Now to my point: when I ordered my new, custom made basset horn (which
arrived yesterday), I said "I must have a wooden bell." That was pretty
dumb because, frankly, I had no evidence to substantiate the claim that
my colleague in London had made, so why was I ordering something for
which I had no experience? But Steve Fox in Canada did not flinch at my
request.

Let me suggest that it really does make a difference. And I have not
even seriously begun to study the sound character of my new horn because
I need to work on a mouthpiece and some reeds before anything else. But
I can sense a different tonal quality to the low C and low D.

Fox did other things to the bell, such as placing about 15 holes in a
circular pattern (each hole the width of a pencil eraser) about 1 inch
above the flare. I asked him about it (never having seen it before) and
his response was that when I played the low notes, I would understand
why he put them there. So maybe the sound character difference I detect
is due more to the holes than to the wooden bell.

I have a great deal to learn. And my chops are mush. Yesterday I ran
through Mozart's Requiem and was bushed halfway through the Kyrie fugue.
Maybe today I can get to the Recordare.

But I am still thinking about wooden bells.
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** Dan Leeson **
** leeson0@-----.net **
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