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Re: Affordable C Clarinets Amati vs Forte

Author: Simon Aldrich
Date: 2011-03-12 14:08

>> Regarding the low throat tones, I had a shorter barrel made <
>What length is it?

I had the Segal barrel made to 43 mm, 1.5 mm shorter than the shorter of the two Forte barrels.

>> There is a hole in the bell on the Forte C clarinet which I had tripled in size to bring up the B.
>What do you mean by "tripled"? Triple the diameter?

Because the original hole in the bell was close to the bell's inner tenon socket, we could not enlarge the hole symmetrically, meaning we could not make it a larger round hole. To do so would have collided the enlarged hole with the tenon socket. Therefore we had to make the hole larger in an oval fashion. It looks weird but it brought up the long B. I said "tripled the diameter" because the hole was more than doubled in size. Eyeballing it, I guesstimated the resulting hole was roughly three times the size of the original (but not round, therefore I couldn't measure the diameter).

>According to Omar the Forte is made to specs and has a different tone hole >configuration. Obvioulsy they chose to keep this tone hole size on the Forte or >it was specificailly made this way for the design of the Forte

You might be right but I am not convinced of that. Why would would someone make the tonehole smaller if the result was a very flat note? All the toneholes are proportional to Bb clarinet toneholes except the long C tonehole, which is not only strangely small but has a padcup size which suggests the tonehole should be larger.
The size of pad cups are usually commensurate with the size of the tonehole. The smaller the tonehole, the smaller the pad and padcup. On the Forte C clarinet the padcups over the lowest 2 toneholes are roughly the same size (as on regular Bb and A clarinets). I presume he pads and padcups ares roughly the same size because the toneholes are roughly the same size. But on the Forte the tonehole responsible for the low C is considerably smaller than the tonehole above *but with a disproportionately large cup* as though the tonehole was meant to be larger. I could be wrong.
But the long C is very flat and the size of the tonehole cup suggests the C tonehole should be larger. When the C tonehole was enlarged (thereby matching the size of its padcup) it played in tune.
I find the possible reasons and explanations less important than the fact that the 3 operations improved the issues (shorter barrel, enlarged hole in bell and enlarged C tonehole).

Simon

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