Klarinet Archive - Posting 000134.txt from 2003/12

From: "Forest Aten" <forestaten@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Yamaha YCL-20
Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 16:08:48 -0500

Karl,

I've often experienced (through students) the same issues with Yamaha's
student line.

Forest Aten

----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl Krelove" <karlkrelove@-----.net>
To: "Klarinet" <klarinet@-----.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 2:23 PM
Subject: [kl] Yamaha YCL-20

> 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 atypical or I have been laboring under an outdated impression of the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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