 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: am0032
Date: 2006-06-30 14:17
Lately I have been hearing alot about different materials used for mouthpieces and clarinets. Hard rubber seems to be the material of choice for most mouthpieces and Brad Behn now has a hard rubber to replicate that of the great mouthpieces of the past. If hard rubber is such a great material, why aren't more barrels, bells, and clarinets made of this material?
Secondly, grenadilla wood is the most common material used to make clarinets. I've heard that the main reason grenadilla wood is used is because it is easy to machine and a relatively stable wood, not its tonal properties.
Lastly, cocobolo wood is known to be not as stable a material as grenadilla. Has anyone had experience with cocobolo products changing signifigantly over time?
I wanted to get some thoughts on the hard rubber, grenadilla, cocobolo materials that are used for the different parts of clarinets.
Adam
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2006-06-30 16:29
Ebonite contains sulphur which turns silver plated keys black, and over time the finish turns green. A lot of the cheap Chinese imports are in ebonite.
I've just worked on an old ebonite B&H Imperial clarinet from around the 1930s (HUGE bore - 15.4mm at the middle tenon - that's 0.2mm wider than a 1010!) and this has nickel plated keys though it still has silver plated pillars which have tarnished - wooden Imperials normally had silver plated keys (and were standard issue with the military bands until B&H stopped making them in the early '80s, and began distributing Buffet clarinets instead) but the ones made for the tropics were in ebonite with nickel plated keys so the plating didn't turn black.
Ebonite also blunts tools more than wood, it can burn if machined too fast (and doesn't clear during turning) and gives off the classic 'rotten egg' smell when machined - though ebonite will last for years.
Grenadilla if seasoned well and maintained well will also last for years, it's stable lengthwise but will shrink and expand widthways - so joints will be slightly oval through shrinkage.
Cocobolo is waxy in comparison to grenadilla in the way it machines, it's also more toxic than grenadilla and can cause allergic reactions (usually in the form of a rash) with some people, it's less dense so there's a saving in weight in a cocobolo bodied instrument, but it hasn't got the same stability as blackwood. Over time, cocobolo will darken from the deep orange colour of a newly polished joint through to black several years down the line, though tonally all instruments made from any wood will change over time as well.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2006-06-30 16:36
Edit: my comments are about acoustical properties only - manufacturing is something different...
At the risk of being lynched - I do not believe that the material (as long as it is of comparably density and specific weight) really matters. What counts in my opinion is that the material is acoustically inert or at least passive; it should not resonate with the air column. Wood is good because it has certain damping (not muffling) properties while certain plastics or metal seems to be more 'resonant' as it propagates eg the clack of a key more than wood or hard rubber.
In a completely unscientific test, my teacher and I swapped clarinets (I had my metal clarinet with me that day). He still had "his" sound, I still had mine.
What does count is workmanship, accuracy and the quality of the hardware "around" it. Traditionally, expensive wooden instruments get more care and tweaks than cheap plastic horns. Buffet with Greenline attempts to bend that equation; this seems to indicate that good plastic is on par with good wood.
Ditto with the mouthpieces. What counts (in my opinion) is expertise in manufacturing, not necessarily the material.
We should not forget that the human mind is important: if you think you got a best-of-breed instrument, you might indeed sound better while a cheap firesale instrument only depresses you.
This is just my personal view, based only on a relatively small sample of instruments over a very limited timeframe. Others will inevitably disagree.
--
Ben
Post Edited (2006-06-30 17:05)
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2006-06-30 17:07
(Disclaimer - I am maker of the Forte' Bb and C clarinets)
Woods with a lot of oil - either natural or wood impregnated with oil - machine more easily and tool steel drills, lathe tools, and milling bits last a good amount of time. The harder plastics like ABS and apparently the Buffet Grenadilla wood plastic composite require carbide tip and edged tools or diamond tools for machining. Hard rubber can be machined with tool steel bits. Delrin is intermediate between hard plastics and wood. Rod or bulk material of almost any wood and quality ABS, hard instrument grade rubber or Delrin is not significantly cheaper than the other. Core materials comprising only about 10%-20% of the instrument cost to manufacture. Believe me, the age old bias of: wood=good, and plastic=bad is a hard notion to change in the community however.
The old controversy of whether the material contributes significantly to tone still rages on. I believe that there is no doubt that exact machining of the material and proper fit and finish contribute significantly to the playing characteristics and ultimately tone of an instrument.
Cocobolo is not quite as hard and has a more loose grain structure than Grenadilla and the grain will rise slightly if exposed to a lot of water even though it has significant oil content. It is also more prone to dimensional distortion than Grenadilla. Dust from Cocobolo is a known allergen and some people are very sensitive to this allergen making manufacturing on a large scale more costly for proper ventilation and work health problems. The tonal qualities of barrels and bells made of Cocobolo have been described by many (although there is no scientific proof that I am aware of) as being different - some say "warmer" than Grenadilla. Some say that hard rubber also has better tonal qualities than plastic - not proven to my knowledge.
We have our custom barrels for the Forte' Bb machined out of hard rubber only because an injection mold for ABS or Delrin plastic costs many thousands of dollars initially.
With the apparent depletion of African Black wood there are several other candidates in the wings to replace it for wood instruments including Mopani and Ipe. Stability of Grenadilla wood instruments has been documented over time but less so or not at all for other woods (some woods for recorders have a long history however). Of course high quality composite or plastic instruments may become the norm in the future.
L. Omar Henderson
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Author: Vytas
Date: 2006-06-30 18:12
A person with potatoes in his ears cannot hear the difference.
Hearing is believing!
Vytas Krass
Professional clarinet technician
Custom clarinet mouthpiece maker
Former professional clarinet player
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2006-06-30 18:13
Vytas wrote:
> A person with potatoes in his ears cannot hear the difference.
Just call me Mr. Potato Head
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Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2006-06-30 19:01
Just call me Ore Ida.
My hard-rubber "A" clarinet sounds indistinguishable from a good wood one. Hearing is believing, Vytas!
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2006-06-30 19:16
A person with potatoes in his ears cannot hear the difference.
<unplugs potato>
Huh?
IOW you say that every nerd with an RC can sound as good as - duh, who uses an RC again? Or that Eddie Daniels (just to drop a name) on Bundy sounds as bad as I do?
This is like saying that Mercedes drivers are better traffic participants.
--
Ben
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Author: BobD
Date: 2006-07-01 19:07
"If hard rubber is such a great material, why aren't more barrels, bells, and clarinets made of this material?"
Back in the 1930s and up to WWII a number of clarinets were offered totally made from hard rubber while others were offered with wood top and bottom sections and hard rubber for all the other parts. When WWII erupted rubber supplies became short plus much rubber that was available was needed for the war efforts of all countries and that's when the use of hard rubber for clarinets started to go downhill. During and following WWII the development of all kinds of plasts took off along with the development of molding techniques for using them making the resurrection of hard rubber unnecessary. Many factors enter the picture in deciding what materials to use at any point in time as some above have pointed out.
Bob Draznik
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Author: C2thew
Date: 2006-07-01 20:24
my vote is for rubber. wood clarinets are depleting natures forests. the more we continue to harvest, the more the world is going to klil us. you can see it now. global warming and an increase of UV rays. people should use rubber more. its just environmentally friendly.
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. they are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which was already but too easy to arrive as railroads lead to Boston to New York
-Walden; Henry Thoreau
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Author: Bruno
Date: 2006-07-01 20:25
What about that Buffet Grenadilla wood plastic composite? I believe Buffet is charging the same for it as for grenadilla and claim it to be just as resonant. Would seem to eliminate the danger of cracking as well.
Are any classical players selecting it?
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2006-07-01 21:07
A fine discussion above. Having now, for my TLC, one of the very best-appearing Gren. Selmer-Paris A's, and the priveledge of playing this "Very Special", "Winged" Selmer, points out to me the V-Hi quality selection of wood [the highest density w: machinablity] and the near perfection of keying/tuning I have ever seen. As such, I do believe that material selection and mfg'g techniques do make for a fine instrument. Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-07-03 04:14
Although I was playing on them when they first came out (Navy instrument), my Buffet Greenline was substantially heavier than my R-13. I played it exculsively because we were often playing outside in conditions that weren't terribly great for clarinets. I have heard a couple of reports of Greenlines cracking but I've never actually seen one crack.
-Randy
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Author: mnhnhyouh
Date: 2006-07-03 21:10
"wood clarinets are depleting natures forests. the more we continue to harvest, the more the world is going to klil us. you can see it now. global warming and an increase of UV rays. "
While it seems that chopping down trees, among other things, is starting to cause greenhouse warming, this is not, in any way, related to UV rays.
The increase in UV radiation is caused by a depletion of ozone in the upper atmosphere, which in turn was caused by releasing a class of gasses called CFC's.
The release of CFCs has been drastically reduced, and the "hole" in the ozone layer is no longer increasing, and should, over the next bunch of decades, be restored.
</off topic>
h
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2006-07-03 22:47
Which hopefully will eventually reduce the very high skin cancer rate in my neck, of the woods. The globe really is quite a small place when it comes to cause and effect.
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2006-07-03 23:09
The globe really is quite a small place when it comes to cause and effect
Huh? The politicians behave as if pollution and whatnot stops at the country borders... ![[whoa]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie10.gif)
Back to the subject - I just overhauled an elderly Bundy and was surprised to see that Selmer's Resonite (which closely resembles Bakelite) and Vito's (which is more like ABS) Reso-something are quite different.
Re repairability I'd probably prefer Vito's concoction but in terms of visual endurability (read: stratch resistance etc) Bundy gets my vote.
I'm still scratching my head why near-perfect Bundies (?) can be had for less than twenty dollars and people shell out six times that amount for instruments of questionable origin...heck, it sounds like a clarinet!
--
Ben
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Author: msloss
Date: 2006-07-04 02:57
Can we get a fact check on aisle 4?
I'd like somebody to cite a source that says the polar hole in the ozone is not expanding. While at it, perhaps a source cited that confirms that CFCs are the sole source of ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere.
Gruetzi, tictactux. Not going to lynch, but I would like a citation of a source or test that asserts the material has no bearing on the sound (a source based on something more than just opinion please). If somebody were to use a contact accelerometer on the body of a clarinet you would find it is anything but acoustically inert.
We simply cannot make sweeping statements that rule out individual factors that coalesce to form the resonant sound of the clarinet. The oral cavity of the player, the external physical shape of the player (let's face it -- a fat guy is going to soak up more sound than a skinny one), the meatiness of the fingers, the finger height, the reed, the mouthpiece, etc., etc., ad nauseum all nuance the sound.
Yes, hard rubber has marvelous potential as a material. I had a lengthy conversation with Guy Chadash on the subject not long ago and he talked about wanting to make one of his clarinets out of hard rubber because he believes the resulting instrument would be remarkable. I wouldn't say it is all that environmentally friendly but I defer to the materials scientists who troll this board on that matter. The source of the materials and the vulcanizing process may be just as impactful, in different ways, as chopping down a mpingo tree.
Gordon -- go get that looked at. And turn off your air conditioner. It is eating a hole in your neck...
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2006-07-04 03:16
msloss wrote:
> Can we get a fact check on aisle 4?
Why certainly.
> I'd like somebody to cite a source that says the polar hole in
> the ozone is not expanding.
It's cyclical; depends on when you measure it and what your reference is; the hole has been shrinking on the average ... until last year.
http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEM712A5QCE_environment_0.html
As for CFCs being the sole source of ozone depletion - not sole, but major contributor by a wide margin because of the activity of chlorine. Same reference.
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-07-04 03:25
No less a source than Mr. Benade, arguably the guru of musical acoustics, stated that due to the thick wall of the clarinet, the material's acoustical properties mean far less than its mechanical suitability, that it is, in fact, acoustically inert.
I'd be interested to see an accelerometer that could measure movement due to high frequency vibrations. I work professionally with accelerometers and I'd love to see an instrument that has that kind of sensitivity and response. I think what you would be looking for would be a contact transducer that you could embed into the material. This would be a microphone. However, you wouldn't be able to differentiate between vibrations that are active, or adding to the sound versus vibrations that are reactive, or resulting from the sound. This is somewhat similar to the bone conduction you experience by having the your teeth on the mouthpiece. To experience the acoustics that the body of a clarinet is feeling, simply put on some earplugs and play something...the clacking of the keys predominates, unless you play double-lipped.
Speaking of microphones, another telling fact that the material is less important is the fact that when miking a wind instrument, you mike the airstream and not the material.
A more succesful point of departure for argument would be the fact that recorders made from different materials sound differently, but nobody has figures out whether this is due to the grain of the wood or the properties of the windway cut. Recorders made of grenadilla, by the way, are known to, in addition to being quite heavy, have a penetrating sound, but they are capable of being cut to a precision that is impossible with softer, less dense woods.
The points that you make about the wildly variable factors in modern clarinetistry actually support the assertion that compared to these factors, the slight resonance exhibited by the body of the instrument is a small factor, indeed.
I also find it interesting that you ask for citations and in the same paragraph make the statement that, "If somebody were to use a contact accelerometer on the body of a clarinet you would find it is anything but acoustically inert." Do we have a citation for this?
-Randy
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Author: msloss
Date: 2006-07-04 04:47
Well, ok then. I imagined the B&K equipment. Fair enough. I guess somebody should also inform those loudspeaker manufacturers that use them. Oh yes, and all those spectral waterfall plots of cabinet resonances that Stereophile publishes every month. They've simply got to stop with those.
I don't have access to the gear any more to do it myself again and present the data so I will concede the point. I was grateful to be able to refer to the esteemed Mr. Benade's work in studies I was doing of how to acoustically model the clarinet in a virtual (read, computer) environment. Modeling the turbulent air column was challenging enough without overlaying other factors like absorbent surfaces and the effect of manufacturing materials. But, a few empirical questions. For lack of a tape accelerometer, touch a clarinet that is being played -- do you feel it resonating? Peel the patch off the mouthpiece and play it again. Does it rattle your teeth? Are you saying that these resonances do not contribute to, or in some respects interfere with, the acoustic signature of the horn? Would these resonances not impact the sound produced by a highly refined symphonic player, however nuanced, such that it might impact their choice of instrument and material?
Mark, my chemistry is two decades out of date so I'm seriously screwed when my daughter gets to high school, but aren't CFCs part of a broader class of chemicals (halocarbons) that all eat a hole in the ozone? There is some cyclicality in it, but as you say, dependent on when and how you measure (including the size of the sample window). NOAA presents similarly disturbing data, particularly about the Antarctic hole. (Want to have some more fun, check out this one -- http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/). One year does not a trend make, but the last 20 or 30 sure are frightening. Forgive my Al Gore digression. I just can't stop hugging trees that aren't Mpingo. A clarinetist plays Poulenc in Midtown and an Aussie gets a sunburn...
So I'm not sure what is being said here. Are all of the craftsmen who have been discussed at length here full of (choice of animal exhaust here) with their emphasis on composition and quality of materials? Are the symphony players I work with just neurotic when they are selecting horns? Is Selmer just supporting the Mpingo cartel with the very thick-walled Recital? Does Diet Coke taste just as good as the real thing?
And Randy, your point about recorders I think is very salient and worth exploring. Stripping away the trappings of reeds, ligatures, in many cases keywork, and getting down to craftsmanship and materials at such a fundamental level would be fascinating. I do find your observations about the different qualities, however unquantified, of the instruments by material to be telling. I have played but never studied recorders in that way. Are you aware of any work that has been done in this regard?
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-07-04 06:21
I've seen a lot of stuff by the Aussies about recorder construction, and I'll have to take a look around for the web sites. When you look at recorder construction, the best recorders generally come from the rosewood family (which includes our friend grenadilla). They generally give a louder, more penetrating sound and are generally the more favored material to work with. Some people I know think it is a question of the grain of the wood, but my personal opinion doesn't concur. The grain hypotheses leads people to choose, for example, the simulated wood-grain plastic yamahas (quite good instruments), but that argument is flawed because the simulated grain doesn't extend inside the instrument.
I personally think that at issue is the strength , stability, and moisture and heat resistance of the material. A clarinet may be able to tolerate a slight change in dimension but the windway of a recorder cannot without causing drastic changes in the sound. This is why recorders made of pearwood (the only softwood used) have to be impregnated with wax, and this is not an optimal solution (pearwood recorders are the cheapest of the wood instruments).
By this reasoning, though, it would seem that plastic or rubber would be the perfect material, since they are impervious to moisture. My guess here (and I very well could be wrong) is that the coefficients of expansion differ, particularly in the case of plastic. I've heard good things about rubber clarinets and I'm considering giving the Arioso a spin.
I agree that you can feel a clarinet vibrate, but the major high-amplitude (and low-frequency) vibrations come from the keywork (again, these are painfully evident if you take off the mouthpiece patch and play with earplugs). Thankfully these aren't transmitted to air column. I think you actually nail it on the head when you talk about speakers. Speakers are made to impart vibration to the air. As such they consist of thin elements (usually) that move back and forth based on how they are driven. Accelerometers can capture these movements because they are of much higher amplitude. Imagine taking a block of plastic, rubber, or wood and trying to vibrate it in such a fashion as to drive air vibrations around it. Because of the inertia of the material (as opposed to the very light speaker material) you'd be hard pressed to cause any real sound, even if the hunk of material was clarinet shaped. This is because the inertia causes the imparted vibration to have a very low amplitude. We can feel this because of our marvelously sensitive sense of touch, but the vibration is slight. In string instruments, where the wood DOES have to impart vibrations to the air, the soundboxes are made of very thin wood with well designed bridges and bracings the get that thin wood to vibrate in order to vibrate the air, much as a speaker does.
Another issue would be that the clarinet-shaped hunk would have a discrete set of resonance frequencies that would not change based on the note played. The air column changes its resonance frequency every time we open or close a tone hole. Thus, the resonance of the clarinet material would possibly help some notes and hinder others.
Due to the high inertia of the system and the low energy it imparts to the air column as opposed to the air-reed effect, I'd have to say that the vibration of the instrument walls, though present, is not big enough to make a difference. It's sort of like a mosquito hitting your windshield: it will certainly have an effect on your gas mileage, just not enough to worry about.
What a fascinating discussion!
-Randy
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Author: David Peacham
Date: 2006-07-04 09:15
Randy wrote: "A more succesful point of departure for argument would be the fact that recorders made from different materials sound differently, but nobody has figures out whether this is due to the grain of the wood or the properties of the windway cut."
It would seem to be a trivial exercise to take two recorders of identical design but different woods (say, two machine-made Moeck Rottenburghs) and put the head of one on the body of the other.
Maybe someone would like to try this?
-----------
If there are so many people on this board unwilling or unable to have a civil and balanced discussion about important issues, then I shan't bother to post here any more.
To the great relief of many of you, no doubt.
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2006-07-04 09:22
Hmmm. I expect that different materials, cut with the same CNC programme, will produce slightly different results, and slightly different surface textures. So my guess is that it is pretty difficult to separate these parameters from any other properties of the timber.
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2006-07-04 14:08
Excellent technical discussions above !! It seems to me that presently there is too little physical-acoustical-materials research being carried on by OUR "musical-studies" graduate students in our univrsities. Perhaps these may be too complex-lengthy for a several-years graduate degree, but I'd like to know if there are long-term researches even contemplated by our teachers. I believe I have heard of one in New Zealand, Help, please. Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-07-04 14:09
Right....in statistical terms the "within group" variation might be on par with the "between group" variation. I think that this is why we all spend so much time (or at least should) choosing between so many "identical" instruments when we want to make a purchase. This goes as much for the Moeck Rottenburghs as it does for Buffet R-13's.
-Randy
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2006-07-04 14:20
If you're truly interested on the effects of wall vibrations on sound, there is a plethora of information on such matters if you care to do some digging - but you'll have to extrapolate, since most of the research is being done with pipe organ.
Backus J, Hundley T C (1966): Wall vibrations in flue organ pipes
and their effect on tone. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., vol. 39-5, pp. 936-945.
Runnemalm A (1997): Effects of material choice and tooling methods
on structural modes of open organ pipes. Int. symposium on musical
acoustics, Proc. Inst. Of Acoustics, vol. 19 part 5, pp. 345-352.
Kob M (1998): On the influence of wall vibrations on the transient
sound of flue organ pipes. Proc. Nordic Acoustic Meeting 98.
would be good starting points.
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-07-04 16:02
Rochester is home to two master organ restorers (one of whom also happens to be a carrillioneer)...I'll have a chat with them. If I'm not mistaken (and i could be) the open pipes are the ones made of thin-walled metal rather than thick-walled wood (like the more tunable reeds).
Do you have a source for these journals? I can only get biomedical journals through my workplace....
-Randy
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2006-07-04 16:23
Cuisleannach wrote:
> Rochester is home to two master organ restorers (one of whom
> also happens to be a carrillioneer)...I'll have a chat with
> them.
That may not be helpful. If you think clarinetists have strong opinions about materials, you haven't talked to organ builders ...
> Do you have a source for these journals?
Head over to RIT. They'll have most of them.
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Author: CJB
Date: 2006-07-04 17:27
I can't remember the source (it's been a few years since I did my dissertation) but I do remember reading a very authorative tome claiming that the material a recorder was made from had no influence on the sound of the instrument. Sadly I probably wouldn't have referenced that article as the dissertation was only in reference to clarinet tone and so over the word limit anything that was 'interesting but a little off topic' got removed.
I couldn't come to any real overall conclusions from the literature I encountered. Many of the papers were describing computer models of the clarinet and had taken the walls of the instrument to be rigid and non-deforming. I am an experimentalist not a modeller but in conversations with my more theoretical collegue (we have mused over this many times....it beats real work) feel that it may be possible to modify the boundary conditions used to reflect the material used. However, as this is a significant piece of work obtaining funding to investigate it further would be difficult.
My very limited experimental work didn't allow me to carry out spectral analysis of the tone of identical instruments made from different materials. My aim was to give weight to the main conclusion of my literature review - that the reed, and the frequencies it injects into the system dominate the tone of the instrument.
I would love to investigate this further, sadly the resouces are hard to come by. I live in hope of one of the instrument manufacturers getting interested. With the current interest in soft metrology (how things feel, sound quality and other properties that it is hard to measure in a quantified rather than subjective manner) techniques may be being developed to help assess the problem.
Sorry if this is rambling and incoherent, it's been a long day and I now need to dash to a rehearsal so haven't got time to edit it (who was it who said 'I've written a long letter as I haven't time to write a short one'?)
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2006-07-04 19:00
After a V G Bar-BQ July 4th lunch-dinner, it occured to me that the academic research I was referring to a few posts above here, was/is that at the University of New South Wales, Australia [not N Z, sorry, Gordon] as I recall www.phys.unsw.edu.au, help me please GBK/MC. Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-07-04 20:52
Sorry Mark, no RIT here.......MN not NY. I'm wondering if the U of Minn might have those journals. There's no university here. I'll keep that in mind about the opinionated views of organ builders....
The recorder work I was mentioning before, Don, was done at NSW, where they apparently have a pretty bang-up acoustics department.
-Randy
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2006-07-04 23:09
I think that a grand experiment has already been conducted by Buffet in making the Greenline series of clarinets. Despite the addition of Grenadilla powder and some carbon fiber strands the material of the Greenline is basically plastic. You can of course argue that the Grenadilla adds certain acoustic properties to the matrix but as has already been established it is very much harder than wood and takes special carbide tools to machine it and is vastly different than the wood counterpart. Manufacturing techniques (ah, there drops out one large variable) are very similar. Looking at the bore surface with high magnification - and I have done this observation - the surface properties are very much more smooth than the burnished Grenadilla counterpart. The surface characteristics are very different, the specific gravity of the materials is very different, and resonant qualities of the materials - I suggest - are different. The trouble with any experiment is the statistical sampling set must be large with many variables because you need many samples to have the "power" to discern a statistical difference. Buffet basically has provided the sample set and by many, not all, observers testing the two clarinets are very similar - the same, maybe not, but undeniably similar. So similar in fact that many (at least by a review of many BB treads) think them akin.
One could possibly design the definitive experiment but the cost and time would be astronomical.
L. Omar Henderson
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Author: Cuisleannach
Date: 2006-07-05 05:29
Perhaps a reverse test would be more telling: find five professional clarinettists (the number is picked out of the air) and have them test the same 10 clarinets, selected at random from sources throughout the company (although they'd have to be either stock instruments or all customized by the same person), as if they were buying them, and have the pros rate them. Then they could be taken apart, scoped with a borescope, and every dimension measured. This would tell us (perhaps) if the differences are manufactured into the instrument or if there's a difference in the raw materials.
The power of the test would depend on the variance between the instruments. I believe that the variance between the professionals' ratings would probably be quite low, and I'm not sure exactly how QC works with instrument manufacture, but the variance there might be low enough to detect a possible significant difference in the materials that would be adequately powered.
What would be even better is to develop a special key system that could be installed to make every clarinet "feel" the same, so blind tests could be done using different brands and materials.
After all, as much as I like to overthink things, the proof is in the playing.
-Randy
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2006-07-05 10:33
Randy, the idea may be worthy but the numbers are very low. Look at the circumstance that presently exists where, for example, professional grade instruments of the same popular brand are gone over by a group of professionals routinely and a "good" instrument selected among a bunch of instruments that are supposedly manufactured under the same conditions, using the same raw material - Grenadilla, and fit and finished to the quality control limits of a professional grade instrument. This indicates to me that there are a large number of variables that make up the final tone, intonation, and other subtle factors which contribute to the final - some may say objective (professional's opinion), others subjective (again, professionals personal bias) opinion of an instrument. There are of course concrete conditions - e.g. spring tension, pad height and sealing, degree of undercutting tone holes, etc. that contribute or distract from instrument performance but many variables with less direct effects. It is hard to sort out materials from other factors given the within model (materials similar) variation. It is even difficult to calculate sample size and "power" needed because defining all the variables is difficult but not beyond the scope of conjecture - > 5,000 instruments each of 2 different materials with "similar" testers.
L. Omar Henderson
Post Edited (2006-07-05 10:46)
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Author: David Peacham
Date: 2006-07-05 11:47
Another interesting experiment would be:
Take a set of "identical" instruments, and a group of professionals. Get each professional to select the best instrument, or, ideally, to rank them in order. The instruments should undergo a pre-selection to eliminate any that are clearly substandard.
Repeat several times, with the same instruments and professionals, on different days.
To be determined:
1. Do all the professionals rank the instruments alike, or is each one selecting on different criteria?
2. Is each professional consistent in his choice from day to day?
If the answer to question (1) is that they tend to agree, then that suggests it is indeed worthwhile to pay a professional to choose an instrument for you. If they tend to disagree, then there is little point - unless you can find a professional whose tastes agree with your own.
If the answer to question (2) is that they change their minds from day to day, then that would suggest that the whole thing is mumbo-jumbo. Heaven forfend.
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If there are so many people on this board unwilling or unable to have a civil and balanced discussion about important issues, then I shan't bother to post here any more.
To the great relief of many of you, no doubt.
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2006-07-05 13:20
Fine discussion of "testing" , guys, I'll ask my pharm.-analytical-chemist son's opinion, its beyond my mathematics quickly, I either love them, or complain about their [percieved] shortcomings. Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: Synonymous Botch
Date: 2006-07-06 10:52
I've performed an uncontrolled test of clarinets and the effect of materials used in their construction when I still sold clarinets to local players.
With the labels covered by masking tape (all covered in the same four places) the players tended toward the instruments with the sweetest sound, if not the best tuning.
These players were all advancing, with less than five years experience each.
The most commonly selected instruments were the Couesnon Monopole and Yamaha YCL-72. The remaining choices were a lone Marigaux 355 and three different Buffet R13s.
These tests were performed without consideration of selling price.
When the selections were revealed, every playerto the last changed their purchase choice to a Buffet R13 as their instrument.
So, the material used to imprint the Buffet logo must make some contribution.
I believe that reeds dipped in this elixir would make the best music.
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2006-07-06 11:01
Synonymous Botch wrote:
> When the selections were revealed, every playerto
> the last changed their purchase choice to a Buffet R13
> as their instrument.
Maybe they were just considering the resale value...
--
Ben
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The Clarinet Pages
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