 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Ken Rasmussen
Date: 2000-11-03 02:12
I've never done any testing myself, but people who have had the opportunity often speak of profound qualitative differences between what ought to be identical clarinets. Several threads have made mention of this recently. My question is this: Is this variability a proven fact, and if so, have the causes been investigated?
My guess is that it does exist, though I expect it may be overstated in many cases. There are several sources of inconsistency that I can think of: Material differences between horns, instability of the material used to create the horn; dimensional differences of bore, tone hole placement and size variations, and length differences; and inconsistent adjustment and assembly.
I'm working as a machinist, and I know that a good machinist with good tools can work accurately enough that the differences between parts would be insignificant. Tolerances of .005" are easy to hit. Tolerances of .002" can be achieved with care. With special methods tolerances of less that .001 can be held. Whether the makers are actually making the effort to control the tolerances is another question. I suspect that tolerances are being controlled closely enough most of the time. The wood itself may be the problem. Machining wood is a little like machining a banana: You measure one day and get one result, and you measure it on another day and get another result. There could be important dimensional differences occurring due to the material variability.
I suspect that the material that a horn is made of has little or no effect upon the sound. I think that the characteristic "clarinet" sound is a product of dimensions of the bore and tone holes and the original vibrations caused by the embouchure, reed, ligature and mouthpiece combination.
A likely source of variation is the assembly. Installing the key system with all its pads and corks has to include a huge amount of hand work with its consequent variability.
It seems to me that a more stable material than wood combined with modern tooling and machining technique could eliminate most of the variability between high end instruments. If the technicians assembling the instruments were highly skilled and well trained I think the variability would not be there.
I have no personal knowledge of this subject. I'm just musing. Does anyone know?
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Author: Bob Arney
Date: 2000-11-03 02:31
"I suspect that the material that a horn is made of has little or no effect upon the sound. I think that the characteristic "clarinet" sound is a product of dimensions of the bore and tone holes and the original vibrations caused by the embouchure, reed, ligature and mouthpiece combination."
Ken, In my ancient past I recall going to a "World's Fair" somewhere (I can't remember) and I believe it was that DuPont had a clarinet made of a new material for that time--it was made from Lucite. I thought, at that time as a young clarinet player that it's "clarinet sound" was fine (or so rememberance tells me). But I have never heard of another one, so it must not have been too big a success. Does anyone else remember it?
Bob A
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Author: bob gardner
Date: 2000-11-03 03:05
Ken i think it is really more of vaiability between players. I'm sure that the really good player can make a student horn sound great whereas you give a pro horn to a beginner and it will sound like a student horn. I'm in the second group.
peace
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Author: Fred
Date: 2000-11-03 11:19
To some degree, I believe that the individual setup of the keys and action affect how a player perceives the instrument. As you stated, this involves a great deal of hand work and therefore the variability would be greater, resulting in a different feel and different intonation issues. It would also follow that a horn judged unsuitable could be transformed into a jewel if the player worked with a qualified technician to get the action set to the player's liking. I wonder if anyone has ever tried this? Please note that my thoughts are conjecture (as I've never tried it or know of anyone who has), and I also recognize that fundamental problems with the construction material may result in instrument characteristics that cannot be changed.
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Author: Frank
Date: 2000-11-03 22:32
As far as making a student horn sound like a pro horn, i agree to a point, assuming the student horn is in wonderful working order. Also, if this was true why do we all pay upwards of $2000 for our pro line insturments, why not just spend $300 for a good vito plastic. I mean we pros can make it sound like a pro grade horn.
As far as variances between similar horns. I auditioned about 7 R-13 A clarinets this past janurary. Let me tell you I was dumfounded. These horns played works than a 30 year old bundy. An alot clarinet was sounding better than these things. However, I went to another music sotre in the area and found an an R-13 A of a different year, and the difference was enough that Hlen Keller could have told a difference. They were all brand new, within a couple of years, but none ever played. So yes there alot of differences between insturments. I played 3 R-13 Bb before I found a good one, in all aspects. I actually found many E-13s that played better if not as good as the R-13s. it's all a game of price. It's all a crap shoot...Just play at least 10 horns before picking just the right one. Go to all lenghts to find just the right one.
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Author: Gordon (New Zealand)
Date: 2000-11-04 03:05
All but the junk plays great if it is adjusted properly - with correct venting and no leaks. In my experience factory adjustment of instruments is a disgrace for every manufacturer except perhaps the Pro flutes made by makers who don't make student ones. Even materials are poor from many 'top' makers.
And many repairers return instruments to customers with a mass of small leaks, etc. Track down a better class of repairer if you want any instrument to sound right.
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Author: Ken Rasmussen
Date: 2000-11-04 03:43
Dear Bob: (in response to the lucite clarinet)
My thought is that wood is very appealing. It is not necessarily the most appropriate material to construct horns out of, but it is easy to sell. There are two problems with making horns out of anything else: You've got a big expense to set up production, you've got to get the production process and the instrument refined, and you've got to sell it--and nobody wants to be the first person to buy one.
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Author: Gordon (New Zealand)
Date: 2000-11-04 12:08
I cannot understand this 'huge expense' for setting up to make plastic clarinets.
What is wrong with starting with a rod of plastic and doing ALL the machining with a 'CNC' machine. This is pretty standard equipment today in production plants. With this Computer (Numeric) Control any dimensions can readily be altered by changing a few numbers in a program. The whole process, including undercutting of tone holes would only take a few minutes. And all dimensions could easily be to the nearest 0.001". No ezcuses for keys that line up badly with tone holes.
Isn't this how a MODERN factory would make WOODEN clarinets? Does Yamaha do this with plastic instruments? Their plastic instrument tone holes are undercut and post holes are threaded - that would require a VERY fancy molding process but easy on CNC!
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Author: Gordon (New Zealand)
Date: 2000-11-04 12:19
I reckon the makers produce the $2000 model simply because there are so many suckers out there that think that more money will buy a better horn. The manuufacturer panders to this by producing a horn with not much more than cosmetic differences and doubling the price. Easy money!
The real manufacturing skill is in producing a robust, well designed, good sounding instrument, incorporating recent R&D put into the top range instruments and made with consistent, impeccable engineering strandards and quality control - all for a cheap price.
That is Yamaha's master achievement. What an awesome student clarinet.
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Author: Ken Rasmussen
Date: 2000-11-04 17:52
Dear Gordon:
I'm not an instrument maker, but the CNC route appears to be the only way to go as far as I'm concerned. The "huge expense" that I refer to is the cost of bringing any product to market. I'm not implying that non-wood materials are more costly to work with. Ultimately they should be cheaper to use, and have the added benefit of leaving more trees standing. For a company that is already up and running, with all tooling in place, it would be a lot less expensive to bring out a high quality, non wood horn than for a start-up company to do the same thing. Buffet is doing something like this with their Greenline horns. They are hedging their bet a bit by using wood powder in the resin, probably as much to draw in the wood horn buying crowd as for any mechanical benefit from the wood powder. Personally, I hope Buffet has a lot of success with the product, because I think this new direction will ultimately result in better, less costly horns, that last longer. Since Buffet is already well known as a maker of fine horns they have more likelihood of being able to sell an unproven material. Charles Bay has been getting plastic upper and lower joints partially completed, from LeBlanc, and modifying, and making these into horns, using a lot of parts made by him. He is setting up shop to produce complete instruments, but I don't know whether he plans to produce non wood horns. His willingness to spend his time working with plastic demonstrates his belief in the capability of the material. He will have to go where the money is in order to succeed in business. I hope he can bring out some non-wood horns.
Ken Rasmussen
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Author: Joris van den Berg
Date: 2000-11-05 21:26
Vito's are made on CNC machinery. Leblanc Sonata, concerto, opus and the like are all made on mechanically controlled, specially designed machines dating from about the 60's. a.t.m. they are investigating the switch from these machines to CNC controlled ones. From the way they are produced I'd think most of the differences between instruments are in the tone-hole positions (coppied from a model that is continuesly wearing down from it, and only replaced about once a year) and the undercutting of the tonehole (wich is done by special drilles, the curvature is fixed but how deep the undercutting goes is just a matter of how far the craftsman puls it into the hole (by hand).
Greetings,
Joris
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