Klarinet Archive - Posting 000714.txt from 2004/07

From: Roger Shilcock <roger.shilcock@-----.uk>
Subj: RE: [kl] Material influence on sound...one more time
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 08:37:59 -0400


However - it may well possible to distinguish them by sound
because of differences in quality of manufacture. Ebonite clarinets
would need their own special tooling and production setups; the overheads
involved seem to preclude anything other than mass production. It would
interesting to know whether anyone has firm information on this.
Roger S.

In message <FJEKIMDEOJFJPBKBMDOPCENJCHAA.dnleeson@-----.net>
klarinet@-----.org writes:
> Lelia, Forest's answer is very much on point. There are
> undoubtedly a variety of reasons why one material can be
> considered better for clarinets, but the nature of that
> "betterness" is not that it produces a better sound. Despite the
> variety of dcomments suggesting that there are responsible people
> claiming that material is important in the quality of sound,
> without a real-life blind test of players executing on a variety
> of instruments that differ in materials, those view are nothing
> but opinion.
>
> Metal, glass, rubber, wood, you name it. Given any clarinet
> properly manufactured and using any of these media, I suggest
> that it is impossible to distinguish between them on the basis of
> quality of sound.
>
> Dan Leeson
> DNLeeson@-----.net
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Forest Aten [mailto:forestaten@-----.net]
> Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2004 6:39 AM
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> Subject: Re: [kl] Material influence on sound...one more time
>
>
>
> > Has any company ever promoted a rubber clarinet as a
> top-of-the-line
> > instrument? I have some old advertisements featuring rubber
> clarinets,
> but
> > all are listed as student or economy models. The hard rubber
> clarinets
> > I've seen and/or played on have also been student or economy
> models.
> > They've all been notably bad instruments, but the worst
> problems had to do
> > with intonation, more than tone quality. Moreover, the
> intonation
> problems
> > were typical of low-end clarinets in general, regardless of
> materials:
> > extremely wide twelfths, stuffy clarion D and E from the lower
> register
> > key, and off-pitch LH C#/G# and throat tones. I have no clue
> whether the
> > rubber construction material might have affected the quality,
> since I've
> > never been able to find any rubber clarinet that a leading
> manufacturer
> > claimed as a top-quality competitor against fine wooden
> clarinets from the
> > same era.
> >
> > Some of the old rubber clarinets have a metal tube up the
> center of one or
> > both stacks, to protect the integrity of the shape, but
> sections without
> > metal can warp, if they're subjected to heat and sunlight, for
> instance in
> > a case left open for display at a summer flea market. I saw
> one clarinet
> > that sagged quite a lot, in an old case of the type that stores
> the
> > mouthpiece and barrel, still joined, in one compartment and the
> two
> > sections and the bell still joined and suspended over an empty
> space down
> > the middle. I doubt that there's much a technician could do to
> salvage a
> > warped rubber clarinet.
> >
> > Lelia Loban
> > http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/LeliaLoban
> > Re-defeat Bush in 2004!
> >
>
> Lelia,
>
> Manufacturers will probably never use rubber in a professional
> clarinet. The
> bore and tone holes are drilled in a very precise way in the best
> clarinets.
> High speed precision drilling requires a material that is very
> heat
> tolerant. Rubber doesn't meet this criteria. Better (and more
> expensive)
> high tech materials are available to manufacturers....and these
> materials
> consistently produce better clarinets.
>
> Forest Aten
>
>
>
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