Klarinet Archive - Posting 000230.txt from 2002/11

From: b5w@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: Re: [kl] Putty tuning
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 04:11:22 -0500

<><> somebody wrote:
what does it do?

It was only a few weeks ago that Tony Pay convinced me to remove a key
from my clarinet and clean a hole myself. "Corragio!" he said. So
the idea of altering my instrument by myself is a new venture for me.
I don't really understand what I did, but it worked.

I remembered people posting here that they reduced the size of some
holes in order to change the intonation. Since I was suspicious and
confused about the effects of my spherical bell (my tuner was refusing
to measure low F-natural), I decided to do some "putty tuning" to the
bell's exit hole. I had no idea what would happen. It was just
something to try, and I could undo the modification easily. Like
trying a new mouthpiece or barrel just to see what happens.

Decreasing the exit diameter by about 15% sharpened some chalumeau notes
that were often a few cents flat (even throat Bb!) (depending on my
embouchure that day) without messing up the remainder of the
instrument's intonation. It also caused my tuner to report that my low
F-natural is actually an F-natural. All of my notes up to the top of
the clarion register retained their added resonance and reduction of
higher harmonics (which are the reasons that I use the spherical bell in
the first place).

As a further experiment, I reduced the exit diameter some more, and
everything fell apart. Some lower notes completely refused to play.
Obviously I had gone too far.

I used bright orange modelling clay because it never hardens, it's easy
to see if I want to remove it, and it was easy obtain at 8:00 in the
evening.

Obviously the putty will fall off in a few days. I can't put my
instrument on the stand now because the stand would dislodge the putty,
which required 45 minutes to shape properly. I'll have to keep my eyes
open that it doesn't fall into a tone hole or stick to a pad or
whatever.

But since it improved my situation, I'm going to look at semi-permanent
materials that I can still remove if I mess up on the application.

Yesterday I couldn't even spell instrooment, and now I are deesining
them!

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