Klarinet Archive - Posting 000132.txt from 2003/12
From: "Karl Krelove" <karlkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Yamaha YCL-20
Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 15:23:55 -0500
I just had a visit from a family friend and her daughter. The daughter, a
very serious and musically talented 9th grader, has been having a pitch
problem at school and her band director (a bassoonist), who is also a friend
as well as a colleague, has been asking me to check it out. They finally
brought the instrument over today.
She's playing on a Yamaha YCL-20 with the stock 4C mouthpiece it shipped
with. I know it's a student model, though not the entry level Yamaha model
the beginners in our district rent. With the 4C, the #3 Rico Royal she came
in with and the 66 mm barrel that came with the clarinet, it was as much as
6 cents flat on some notes. I substituted a better mouthpiece with a reed
that responded well on it and substituted an old Buffet 64 mm barrel (wood
with a hard rubber sleeve that was inserted for me). With that set-up, the
clarinet played anywhere from dead-on on some notes to 4 cents flat on
others. When I played on each setup, from the original through all the
substitutions, I got nearly identical results.
What struck me in addition to the general flatness was the unevenness of
intonation note-to-note. My previous experience, and hence my impression of
Yamaha instruments in general including their clarinets, has been that
Yamaha was better than other manufacturers at producing in-tune,
mechanically well made instruments (that happened to be less expensive than
the older European-based brands). I was surprised at the unevenness of the
scale on this clarinet as well as the general problem of flatness with the
instrument as shipped. I would like to know what recent experience any of
you have had with Yamaha student instruments and whether this problem is
atypical or I have been laboring under an outdated impression of the Yamaha
line.
Thanks in advance for reactions.
Karl Krelove
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