 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Ken Rasmussen
Date: 2001-02-24 04:05
Those of you with long memories may remember that I challenged Dave Spiegelthal to tweak my Kolhert Eb sopranino clarinet into tune. It was playing very flat generally, but the intonation was all over the place. There was no way I was going to be able to compensate sufficiently to play it well. Well, he did it! First he tweaked me a bit: He sent back an email saying it was one of the best playing eefers he'd ever seen, and wondered if I'd want to sell it, and what did I want done to it anyway? Later he allowed as to how it could use just a bit of tweaking. The long and the short of it is that he took 3 mm off of the bottom end of the horn, and it plays much better. I still need to practice with the instrument to make it play properly, but now I have the impression that it is a playable instrument, and that the practice will be worthwhile. Thanks for your inspired assistance Dave!! (I added a Fobes Nova mouthpiece and a BG Revelation ligature to the horn. These improved the performance substantially also.)
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2001-02-24 13:16
Strange. I can take the whole bell of my sop clarinet without affecting much at all. Are the rules different for an Eb?
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Author: ron b
Date: 2001-02-24 23:21
Gordon -
My experience has been, as has yours, that most Bb clarinet bells are about 90% 'looks'. We've grown accustomed to the flaired look that, when all's said and done, being that open doesn't effect the pitch much at all. Some flair towards the bottom raises the pitch a bit which helps keep the finger holes within a comfortable reach. Old photos leave us a record of an esthetically interesting, wide variety of wind instrument bell shapes. Oboes, being a rather independent lot, have been doing quite well without the wide bell extravagance for a very long time :]
ron b
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2001-02-26 02:30
I may be wrong, but I seem to remember reading somewhere - maybe Benade's book on acoustics - that the flare corrected the tuning between the lowest note and B (same fingering). What puzzles me is that the intonation between these two notes, to me, is about as bad as it gets, especially as these notes are difficult to lip around.
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Author: Ken Rasmussen
Date: 2001-02-26 06:02
I don't think I described the modification very well: The 3mm came off of the bottom of the horn that the bell attaches to, not the bell itself, so the material removed was before the flare of the bell. The change in tuning was about 10 cents on the lower notes when I play the horn, which takes me near enough to in tune that it's OK. I'm not a skilled Eb horn player, but my subjective impression before was that the horn was too far out for me to want to play it. My impression now is that with practice, it could be played satisfactorily. It still requires some shading to get the intonation right, but now I don't have to strain to do it. For more technical details, and for Dave's perspective on the modification, it would be best to ask Dave.
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Author: Dave Spiegelthal
Date: 2001-02-26 14:40
First, I must state that I did NOT pay Ken to say nice things about me --- it just seems that way! To elaborate on the modifications to his Kohlert eefer: The instrument had a somewhat unusual intonation problem in that not only were the low chalumeau E and F quite flat, but the corresponding 12ths (the low-clarion "long" B and C) were also flat (it is much more common to have a 'spread' between the corresponding 12ths in opposite directions, with the low E and F being flat and the long B and C being sharp). So in this case, with both 12ths being off in the same direction, it was feasible to (mostly) correct them both by shortening the lower joint at the very bottom (just above the bell tenon). There were also a few other isolated notes that were correctable by the usual methods of slightly enlarging the tonehole on either the upper or lower side and adding cork on the opposite wall, or adjusting the pad height. He now has a very nice Eb clarinet with intonation that is close enough for the player to easily bring into pitch while playing (within +/- 10 cents everywhere except for three notes that are only within 15 cents). No magic was employed. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited.
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