 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Bill
Date: 2000-11-17 14:12
What is the weight and outside diameter difference between an R-13 and an R-13 greenline?
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Author: Aaron
Date: 2000-11-18 00:51
NOTHING.....both are exactly the same in all demintions....
The Greenline is just an R-13 made from the left over wood particles from making the rest of the solid wood buffets, held together by and epoxy...no demintions are different...even all the same keywork.
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Author: Todd H.
Date: 2000-11-18 20:06
I thought that the improved intonation and beautiful sonority of the Greenline were the main difference :-) . Although the moisture driven swelling and subsequent shrinking of the bore size (dimensional differences!) of a wood R-13 is'nt a big problem for all, the ones that crack are a real bummer! The wood ones play "all right" too! Have a pleasant day while giving this little thought and chanting the mantra: plastic is good--plastic is good--plastic is good
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Author: Bill
Date: 2000-11-18 20:38
Okay, I'll settle for the weight (number of oz.) of a dry R-13 and R-13 greenline. The new greenline I tried felt heavier than the new R-13.
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2000-11-19 08:41
Why don't you contact Boosey & Hawkes and ask them, & also ask them why Greenline is not mentioned on their web site.
http://www.boosey.com/Instruments/Buffet/FrameBuffet.htm
or just http://www.boosey.com
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Author: Bill
Date: 2000-11-19 10:11
Author: Gordon (NZ) wrote:
Why don't you contact Boosey & Hawkes and ask them, & also ask them why Greenline is not mentioned on their web site.
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I went to the web site to get contact info, and the greenline is now listed.
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Author: mark weinstein
Date: 2000-11-19 13:05
Bill, you are correct, the Greenline is heavier. This has been discussed before. Do a search here or in eth Klarinet Archives. Repeat, the Greenline *IS* heavier. mw
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2000-11-19 14:19
my mistake 2 postings up. The B & H website does mention the Greenline. I didn't notice that there were 4 pages of clarinets.
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2000-11-19 14:22
i'm surprised if it is much heavier if it is 95% grenadilla. The rest is epoxy (which can't be much more dense than grenadilla if at all) and carbon fibre, which is probably lighter than grenadilla.
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Author: Bill
Date: 2000-11-19 14:44
Mark: Thanks, I was searching incorrectly, or in the wrong place.
Someone reported that on a factory tour, they were told that the greenline R-13 averaged 5% heaver than the wood R-13, but that some wood R13s could be heavier than a greenline. It doesn't seem like you could feel a 5% difference.
I didn't find anything that answered my question about the outside diameter. The wood R-13 I tried felt thinner than the greenline R-13 I tried, but maybe the extra weight fooled me. In this regard the greenline felt more like the Selmer Signature and Yamaha SE that I tried.
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Author: mark weinstein
Date: 2000-11-19 15:43
Gordon, I can't give you a spec on weight. I have heard quite a number of people that, upon liftingd each model of clarinet, a Greenline & a standard/100% wooden R-13, comment that the DIFFERENCE in weight was noticeable. That doesn't mean bad, just noticeable. I have played the Greenline twice, at 2000 ClarinetFest & at the 1999 OU Clarinet Symposium. I am NOT an engineer, nor a scientist. But there is a simple explanation for the difference in weight. mw
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2000-11-20 04:42
Another writer on this site claimed,. I think, that tone depended in part on the pores in the timber being open and containing a specific moisture content for efficient conduction of sound rather than the damping of it. His bore oil attempted to buffer the moisture content to the appropriate level. It would be interesting to hear what the Greenline composite does about this issue. I would assume that the pores in the timber dust are sealed, and that they may even be clogged with binder, especially if the wieght is significantly greater than that of the solid timber instrument. This topic could have manyh side avenues. I wonder what Buffet has to say.
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Author: BAC
Date: 2000-11-20 05:30
The greenline is not plastic, but 95% wood - you do not need to be a chemist to understand that. My take on why the Greenline is heaver could be due to how compact the material is - more wood + binder in a unit of area than wood in it's natural form. That said, I could not really tell the difference between the two, that is tell the difference in weight, there was a difference in sound. I heard a rumer that the Greenline was so dense that they needed different cutting tools. Can anyone verify that?
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Author: Don Poulsen
Date: 2000-11-20 18:38
Gordon, as has been discussed many times here, it is doubtful that the material the instrument is made of and, as a corollary, the moisture level in the wood have any noticeable effect on the tone produced by the instrument.
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Author: Dee
Date: 2000-11-20 20:33
BAC wrote:
>
> The greenline is not plastic, but 95% wood - you do not
> need to be a chemist to understand that. My take on why the
> Greenline is heaver could be due to how compact the material is
> - more wood + binder in a unit of area than wood in it's
> natural form. That said, I could not really tell the difference
> between the two, that is tell the difference in weight, there
> was a difference in sound. I heard a rumer that the Greenline
> was so dense that they needed different cutting tools. Can
> anyone verify that?
Actually the ground sawdust must be completely coated by the epoxy binder or it won't hold together well. Once you have done this, it makes no difference whether you have sawdust as the filler, some other material as the filler, or no filler.
Besides that, the fact that is has been ground, mixed with epoxy resin, and compressed will give it entirely different structural properties than natural wood. In reality, you have a totally different material now.
However, I wish Buffet success in this marketing gimmick as someday it may clear the way for companies to overcome the consumer resistance to plastics, resins, etc for professional grade instruments.
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2000-11-21 09:52
Don: Eventually the acoustic scientists and theorists might get off their high horses and realise that the exceedingly perceptive ears of some musicians (not myself) actually do notice a difference. WHEN they do that they can start researching what those differences are and what causes them. It could well be the difference between whether the material acts as a sound damper or a sound conductor. and this may well depend on the moisture content, the size of the pores, the oil content, the direction of grain, the density, the porosity, the tensile strength, etc, etc.
Bac, you seem to be saying that the greenline composite contains less air.... therefore heavier. That is very likely, and backed up by what Dee wrote. So the Greenline may be 95% timber (and almost no air) while on the same measuring system the standard timber instrument may be only say 70% timber and the rest air!
I wonder if Buffet experimented with timber chips rather than dust, to preserve more of the inherent acoustic properties that MAY reside in timber.
No doubt before long there will be a molecular engineer specializing in creating special-purpose polymers, who is also educated in acoustic theory and timber structure, and passionate about clarinet tone quality. He/she will create a polymer that matches or surpasses timber in the acoustic properties we tend to attribute to it.
Only 5% of the timber felled for making clarinets is up to sufficient standard to be used for this purpose, and we as clarinet players play a very significant role in destroying the Tanzanian rain forests, so there is plenty incentive to do something about this and develop timber-matching polymers for clarinets.
(See http://www.blackwoodconservation.org/index.html#map)
http://www.blackwoodconservation.org/index.html#map
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-11-21 13:39
Gordon (NZ) wrote:
>
> Don: Eventually the acoustic scientists and theorists
> might get off their high horses and realise that the
> exceedingly perceptive ears of some musicians (not myself)
> actually do notice a difference.
That's a bit insulting to the number of acoustical engineers and theorists I know who seek out musicians for their research. There are many times that people swear they (know something) or (some effect happens) but by the time all is said and done and the studies performed it becomes apparent that there is no effect or the effect is imperceptible. Or, conversely, an effect hitherto unnoted becomes apparent during the data reduction.
Just because people say it's so doesn't mean it is so. For example, there is the folklore that there are more crimes, emergencies, and general craziness during full moons, yet a great number of statistical surveys show no such thing (http://www.urbanlegends.com/medical/full_moon_fun.html). But ... people keep believing (and spreading the misinformation).
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2000-11-22 12:35
Do you really think that a smooth bore polystyrene foam or cork clarinet would sound the same? History is full of theorists changing their theories as more wisdom on a subject is gained. That is science. Theories are only theories, and most are based on limited knowledge and undertanding. Incidentally the full moon diversion is irrelevant.
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Author: Don Poulsen
Date: 2000-11-22 15:06
I have never seen anything that I would characterize as smooth made from polystyrene or cork, so your question is slightly deceptive. As I assume that you are referring to a theoretical clarinet made of a relatively soft material, let's assume we have a rigid clarinet with a thick inner lining of a soft but smooth (in the clarinet sense) material. (Let's also assume that the final bore dimensions remain the same.) I would expect that if the material is soft enough that it compresses/decompresses to a sufficient extent to absorb sound energy at some of the frequencies produced by the instrument, then, yes, the sound will be affected.
But the materials that clarinets can practically be made of, wood, hard plastic and resins, and metal, are so rigid that they should absorb extremely little of the sound energy; thus, variations in sound should be so small as to be imperceptible.
We could also discuss surface roughness, which, if taken to an extreme, would eventually also affect the sound produced. But all clarinets currently produced have a smooth enough bore that this also should not be a factor.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-11-22 23:34
Gordon (NZ) wrote:
>
>
> Incidentally the full moon diversion is irrelevant.
I think not. It was used as an example of "everyone knows" and "it's been proven" - two things often heard about the "full moon" and "material matters". Have you read any of Benade's works? Interpreted what he was saying? Did you know he used orchestral clarinetists as his test subjects? And - did you know he said that material does matter - but how and where it matters may not be what you think.
Have you read of the experiments on concrete flutes? Of hollow jacketed organ pipes that have been filled with water and then drained? What, after looking the published scientific and subjective (<b>by trained musicians</B>) experiments are your conclusions? And why?
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