Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2010-05-17 21:02
Will be playing the Clarinet 3 book (bass clarinet and sopranos in A, C, and Eb) in Mahler's 1st with our friendly local orchestra. Upon receiving the book early last week I was surprised to see that about half of the music is for the C clarinet. As I am terminally lazy when it comes to transposition I did a quick Internet search for C clarinets and found one of everyone's favorite CSOs, a Chinese-made hard-rubber instrument marketed by Berkeley Wind in California. Cost $195 with free shipping(!). I took a chance and ordered one, it arrived three days later (four days ago as I write this).
The instrument is actually better than I expected. Synopsis first, then the details.
Intonation: Excellent until high clarion C, then that note and all of the altissimo are quite flat.
Tone: No basis for comparison as I've never played another C clarinet, but seems fine to me (using a good Bb clarinet mouthpiece and decent reed).
Ergonomics: Needed lots of tweaking -- details to follow.
Quality of construction: Mediocre at best -- details to follow.
Now the details. It took me about 4-5 hours of play-testing/working on the instrument/play-testing to get the Berkeley to where I'm comfortable performing on it in public.
Intonation --- below the high C, the minor intonation discrepancies I heard were easily fixed by adjusting pad opening heights. However, from C and up into the altissimo I haven't found a solution to the severe flatness yet, other than to use resonance/alternate fingerings which I'm starting to mess around with. My theory about this is that the instrument seems to be built to about the same bore diameter as a Bb clarinet (based on it using a Bb clarinet mouthpiece), whereas acoustically the bore should be a bit smaller. But this is just speculation. Two barrels were provided with the instrument, of nearly identical length (?) -- I used the (very slightly) shorter of the two, pushed all the way in.
Ergonomics --- Just like when playing Eb clarinet, my fingers are too wide for the keys (and my hand position is generally lousy) so I tend to bump into adjacent keys or rings. To remedy this I did the following:
-- Narrowed the throat "A" key considerably and bent it to the right; narrowed both sliver keys substantially (and cut about 1/8" of length off the upper sliver key) and recurved the upper one as well.
-- Shortened the register key spatula slightly and dug a slight hollow in the instrument body underneath it so the key could sit slightly below the surface when closed (to prevent bumping it when operating the thumb ring).
-- Bent both bridge keys to meet along a slight diagonal to allow me to rotate the lower joint clockwise (as viewed from above) relative to the upper joint; and bent both l.h. spatula levers to the right, so that I don't have to rotate my left wrist to operate those two spatulas.
Materials and construction --- Cheap, soft brass keywork with very thin nickel plating. Very easy to bend. Sharp plating flash on the inside of the upper and lower rings, which I could actually feel when covering those rings with my fingertips (solution: filed and sanded off the sharp edges on the inner rims of the rings).
Of most concern to me, the bridge key had been crudely filed or ground by the manufacturer to avoid hitting the C#/G# key, and so much material had been removed that the bridge key is barely more than paper-thin and is clearly going to have to be reinforced somehow or it will bend and eventually break in the near future.
Looking inside the tonehole chimneys, what they call "undercutting" appears to be some very crude flaring of the bore-side inner wall of the toneholes, complete with what looks like molding flash.
Given how cheaply the thing is made, I'm amazed at how well it now plays! So I figure that for the very occasional use this clarinet will get, I've gotten a good deal at $195 purchase cost plus about 4-5 hours of my labor to make it semi-right. It acquitted itself well at orchestra rehearsal yesterday, although my altissimo notes were atrocious as I haven't quite nailed down the alternate fingerings to use up there. But from high C downward the clarinet sounded quite respectable, and I found it very comfortable with all the modifications to the keywork.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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