 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: gsurosey
Date: 2012-03-18 02:01
Why is it that some wooden instruments (such as violins) get better with age, but other wooden instruments (such as clarinets) get worse with age? What changes with clarinet wood that doesn't change with violin wood? Does the type of wood have anything to do with it?
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Rachel
Clarinet Stash:
Bb/A: Buffet R13
Eb: Bundy
Bass: Royal Global Max
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Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2012-03-18 02:36
I'm not an expert, but I suspect that oiling the bore can help. Here's a great link from Larry Naylor: http://www.naylors-woodwind-repair.com/Publications/deterioration-of-grenadilla-instruments
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2012-03-18 03:02
I don't know many violinists who blow through their instruments. I suspect that may have something to do with the cracking, warping thing.
On a less snarky note, I don't think ALL older violins are looked as with awe either. There has been some scientific scuttlebutt over the particularly dense wood at the time of Guarneri and Stradivarius due to the historic cold snap in Europe at that particular point in history.
..............Paul Aviles
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Author: SteveG_CT
Date: 2012-03-18 03:12
It note really fair to compare wind instruments with stringed instruments since the wood serves a different purpose in each. Basically I think it comes down to the fact that a wind instrument with a small bore like a clarinet is much more sensitive to minute changes in dimensions that a larger instrument.
In general the level of sensitivity to changes tends to be inversely proportionate to the size of the instrument. If you are 5 cents flat on a Bb soprano clarinet with a 14.6mm bore you might pull the barrel out 1mm to compensate. Conversely, if you were 5 cents flat on a BBb Contrabass clarinet with a 30mm bore you might pull the neck out 10mm to compensate.
I'll also note that the "stringed instruments get better with age" argument is somewhat controversial. It is often stated that 300 year old violins are better than new violins but the argument is rarely applied to other stringed instruments. For example most people would consider a piano that is more than 50 years old to be ready for the scrap heap.
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Author: rmk54
Date: 2012-03-18 12:41
SteveG_CT wrote:
>... a wind
> instrument with a small bore like a clarinet is much more
> sensitive to minute changes in dimensions that a larger
> instrument.
Obviously you have never seen a luthier (string instrument technician) who, by moving the soundpost less than a millimeter, can entirely change the tone and response of an instrument.
>For example most people would consider a piano that is more than 50 years old to be ready for the scrap heap.
???????????????
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Author: BobD
Date: 2012-03-18 15:03
Simple response: The important wood in violins contains resin. Not all clarinet wood gets worse with age. Clarinet wood gets directly exposed to moisture.
Yes, the woods are different.
Bob Draznik
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2012-03-18 15:07
You're comparing apples and kangaroos.
Violins are made of thin wood that vibrates, excited by the strings. The wood changes over the years, presumably due to fatigue in the fibers -- or, if you're in the opposite school, due to the irregularities being scrubbed out so that older vioins vibrate as a whole.
Clarinets are made of thick wood that hardly vibrates at all. Instead, the sound comes from the vibration of the air in the bore, driven by the reed. The amount of clarinet sound contributed by vibration of the wood is minuscule.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2012-03-18 15:47
Aside from the obvious differences in the tpye of wood, there's also the fact that string instruments have varnish on them, one of the secrets of the finer older string instruments. Then there's the fact the the wood on a stirng instrument is very thin and does not have a bore. It's not so much that the wood itself is a problem with a fine clarinet, it's the fact that the bore changes because it gets wet, it gets dry, over and over again. And if you just let it sit for years and years, the wood can dry out because it does not have the varnish on it. There are so many differences and reasons for this comparision that there really is not a comparision at all. ESP eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: SteveG_CT
Date: 2012-03-18 16:16
rmk54 wrote:
> SteveG_CT wrote:
>
> >... a wind
> > instrument with a small bore like a clarinet is much more
> > sensitive to minute changes in dimensions that a larger
> > instrument.
>
> Obviously you have never seen a luthier (string instrument
> technician) who, by moving the soundpost less than a
> millimeter, can entirely change the tone and response of an
> instrument.
>
> >For example most people would consider a piano that is more
> than 50 years old to be ready for the scrap heap.
>
> ???????????????
No, I'm aware that small adjustments to stringed instrument can and do have large effects but these are usually deliberate changes rather than unintended changes occurring over time.
Regarding the piano comment, the point I'm trying to make is that people don't view all stringed instruments as appreciating in value over time. Some people appreciate the older pianos built during the "golden age" (~1900-1930) but even fully rebuilt and restored examples of these typically sell for substantially less than equivalent newly manufactured versions.
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Author: chris moffatt
Date: 2012-03-19 21:05
A lot of 100-year-old quality wood clarinets are still quality clarinets today. It depends on how they've been taken care of and the original quality of the wood, keywork etc. There's a lot of variation in old clarinets because, among other reasons, there was so much handwork in them. NC machines hadn't been invented then.
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