 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Iacuras
Date: 2004-10-21 02:10
What is the tone difference (if any) between leather pads and cloth pads? I just want to know because I got on pad replaced on my Bass Clarinet, and that one is leather, but the others are cloth. Thanks for any and all help.
Steve
"If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon."
"If you can't learn to do something well, learn to enjoy doing it poorly."
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Author: Fred
Date: 2004-10-21 02:21
Are you sure that the other pads are skin rather than leather? The leather pads come in two common colors - white and tan. You may have white leather pads on your bass. I'm not sure that you can get 2X bladder pads big enough for a bass clarinet. But then, what I don't know about repair could fill volumes. I yield the floor to the techs.
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Author: sfalexi
Date: 2004-10-21 05:28
I don't think the pads really effect the tone THAT much. I can see pads effecting the "popping" sound when opening/closing them. And I can seen them effecting tone when they're closed (because maybe the air doesn't bounce off of them as well as it does the grenedilla or delrin or whatever composition your clarinet is made out of), but all in all I'd say the effect is probably minimal that I'd worry more about the 'popping' of closing a tonehole than the change in sound.
Alexi
US Army Japan Band
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2004-10-21 10:21
Bladder pads are definitely available for bass clarinets, and are used by some makers.
The reason may be historic. Unless they are specially treated, leather pads tend to be somewhat porous. This has two effects. One is that they leak air, especially if they are large, and the other is that condensation soaks through the leather and hardens the underlying felt, eventually resulting in so little resilience that the sealing of the pad is unreliable.
Some (most?) modern leather pads are treated to reduce porosity, but in many cases this makes them tend to stick to tone holes. This has been an annoying problem in recent years for saxophones.
In times gone by, leather pads would have been mostly porous, while good bladder pads produce a totally successful seal.
Bladder pads tend to cut through and fail a lot quicker than do leather pads, especially on bass clarinets.
Nothing so far is perfect, but the 'microfiber', totally-impervious, extremely-tough, imitation, synthetic leather that Music Center uses on some of their top pads gets very close. Unfortunately these pads are very expensive, and not stocked by many outlets.
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