 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: John Morton
Date: 2012-04-06 02:24
I need some to make some barrels. I finally learned the proper term for the rings, but even knowing the name I can't find a vendor. Ideas?
John
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Author: SteveG_CT
Date: 2012-04-06 02:57
John Morton wrote:
> I need some to make some barrels. I finally learned the proper
> term for the rings, but even knowing the name I can't find a
> vendor. Ideas?
> John
I'm not sure about a direct vendor but I know Morrie Backun had a whole bag full of them for sale on the auction site recently. Might be worth checking with him to see if he has more to sell.
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Author: Tony F
Date: 2012-04-06 13:48
Try
http://www.votawtool.com/zcom.asp?pg=products&grp=861&cat=parts
Tony F.
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Author: John Morton
Date: 2012-04-06 14:45
Thanks. The auction site has bags of 60 assorted rings - interesting, but I'm not making a career of this. Votaw has them by the each, @$2+
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Author: MichaelW
Date: 2012-04-07 11:57
Just omit them: http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=368017&t=368017
(JPEGs in Alseg, 2012_04-03 and SteveKim, 2012-04-04)
Post Edited (2012-04-07 13:43)
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Author: Vubble3
Date: 2012-04-07 18:37
my, you must show us pictures of your barrels
Buffet Bb R13 A RC Prestige
buffet chadash and moennig barrels
Lomax classic lig
b40 lyre
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Author: Alseg
Date: 2012-04-07 19:38
Sometimes technicians unload surplus items on auction sites, and you can get them.
There are rings from Ferrees that are thick steel for use in "shrinking" loose socket rings, and they are too heavy for ornamental use.
They could, however, be machined to size.
DiLutis has nice rings on his David Weber barrels....similar to Selmer Signature rings. They would be nice to have.
When I was making barrels w. metal rings, I obtained the materials from the U.K.
I still do make some w. metal rings, but only for custom orders.
Good luck.
Former creator of CUSTOM CLARINET TUNING BARRELS by DR. ALLAN SEGAL
-Where the Sound Matters Most(tm)-
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Author: John Morton
Date: 2012-04-08 01:02
Attachment: barrels.jpg (63k)
> my, you must show us pictures of your barrels
> psohn
I have only made two, a Delrin barrel for my R13 Greenline and a brass/silver plate for my 1928 Silver King. Both were undertaken because I was pushed in all the time - scary even though I have so far always been able to play to pitch (after the first 30 sec., at least!). I'm now going down to 60 mm. or so, to see what good that does.
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Author: Alseg
Date: 2012-04-08 15:50
Curious that you need such a short barrel on your Greenline.
Are you in tune across the scale?
What does the entry bore of your Greenline upper joint measure?
Likewise, I see you have Pyne mouthpieces on both horns.
What is the exit bore on these? He has many bore types and does not state on the website what the letters mean.
(If you can, please use measurement to 0.001 inches. A mm measurement to 0.01mm is not accurate enough to see what is happening)
.
Former creator of CUSTOM CLARINET TUNING BARRELS by DR. ALLAN SEGAL
-Where the Sound Matters Most(tm)-
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2012-04-08 16:02
>> If you can, please use measurement to 0.001 inches. A mm measurement to 0.01mm is not accurate enough to see what is happening <<
Ha? 0.01mm is 0.00039", so more accurate than 0.001". Maybe you have a typo there?
Post Edited (2012-04-08 16:03)
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Author: John Morton
Date: 2012-04-08 17:24
> Are you in tune across the scale?
> What does the entry bore of your Greenline upper joint measure?
> Likewise, I see you have Pyne mouthpieces on both horns.
> What is the exit bore on these? He has many bore types and does not state > on the website what the letters mean.
> (If you can, please use measurement to 0.001 inches. A mm measurement > to 0.01mm is not accurate enough to see what is happening)
(I should correct myself to say that I'm pushed in all the time now - before making this 61 mm. barrel I could not play to pitch.)
I'll check the pitch across the scale when I practice later today. I have a pretty good ear, and to my mind there's nothing to complain about now, except in the altissimo after fatigue sets in. What I want now is a little latitude above pitch.
Measuring now with telescope gauges I get .589" for the exit bore on the Pyne. The model is Signature ~M. (Exit is .598" for the acrylic Pyne on the Silver King). Entry bore for the upper joint is .593"
When I made the R13 barrel I had access to plug gauge sets, so I was hitting +/-.0005" or better. I looked up "Moenig reverse taper" somewhere (having seen it mentioned on this board) and came up with target numbers for a barrel bore tapering from .589" to .580" for a length of 2.48" or ~63 mm.
I play tested the barrel at that stage, and then shortened it further in increments, stopping at 2.40" or ~61 mm. Measuring it now (telescope gauge) the taper reads .588" to .580", which I think indicates that I shortened it from the top end.
thanks
John
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Author: Alseg
Date: 2012-04-08 18:22
OK.
You ARE checking at A=440?
The measurements are not outliers, so it is tough to explain why you need such a short barrel, unless your jaw pressure rivals that of an alligator. Geez
Former creator of CUSTOM CLARINET TUNING BARRELS by DR. ALLAN SEGAL
-Where the Sound Matters Most(tm)-
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Author: Wes
Date: 2012-04-08 21:23
There are places where you can buy clarinet barrel rings on the internet if you search a little more. Maybe one of the places was "Band Something". I needed some for an old wooden B&H simple system clarinet barrel so I took rings off a unneeded plastic barrel and they worked great. It may be cheaper to get a low cost Chinese plastic barrel on the internet and use those rings. The plastic barrel is still useable without rings.
In college, when I took a machine shop course in an engineering school in 1949, I made an all brass barrel to learn something while the alcoholic instructor was not there after lunch. It is the right size and plays fine on my new R13 but sure is heavy and is not useable for that reason. Good luck!
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Author: Caroline Smale
Date: 2012-04-08 22:53
Whenever I get severely cracked barrels, bells etc that are essentially scrap I always salvage the rings for potential future use. So try your local tech, he may do the same.
Wincraft in UK do stock some rings and especially have some obsolete B&H stock however I think they now sell their spares only to trade customers.
Beware the latest Buffet B10/B12 rings - they are plastic and worse than useless.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2012-04-08 23:01
There was a teacher in my area that complained that all his pupils clarinets played flat when he played them. So he took it upon himself to put things right by taking their 'defective' barrels and shortening them so they were in tune for him. However, he shortened them to such a degree (58-60mm) that they were rendered useless for his pupils who now had intonation problems.
I happened to be in a local music shop where one of the clarinets he'd shortened the barrel on was in for a service and it was noted that it wasn't in tune. I could see immediately the barrel was way below the standard 66mm (it was a B12) and the player and her mum were coming in at any point to pick it up. I gave it a play test and the throat notes were a semitone sharp and the lower notes were a quarter tone sharp, so the scale was way out. Then I found a spare B12 barrel and tried it with that and that put the tuning back to where it should be which for me was playing evenly at 442Hz (I do tend to play on the sharpish side, but that's easy to correct).
I was armed with a tuner so when they arrived to collect the clarinet I had the pupil try it out with the shortened barrel and the standard length barrel and didn't show her the tuner display while she played. She hadn't been playing for more than two years at most and had another teacher prior to this one who was a far better clarinet player (and was ridiculed by his successor for teaching double lip embouchure, the comment being made that it's 'old-fashioned' and he's had to 'retrain all his pupils to play with the proper embouchure'), but her tuning was spot on with the standard length barrel and all over the shop with the shortened barrel.
Some background on the teacher - he's a sax player and plays with a wide tip opening and soft reed, so he's opened up his clarinet mouthpiece to the same tip opening and plays on soft reeds to compensate so he can play it with a sax embouchure. But with that set-up and sax embouchure, he can't play in tune. So he shortened his barrel to bring his clarinet up to pitch and that has done nothing other than to throw the intonation out.
Ok. The point I'm making here is that clarinets are built to a specific pitch have a specific length to the body, distances between toneholes and more importantly, the distance from the mouthpiece to the toneholes is a specific ratio in order for the whole instrument to play in tune with itself. Shortening the barrel to make any clarinet play sharper and uniformly sharper is a futile task unless you address other issues. The biggest issue is what is going on north of the mouthpiece and not with the instrument itself provided you're using the length of barrel that's specific for the instrument and the mouthpiece tonechamber isn't too large, as well as the reed strength and facing. A clarinet should readily play in tune which is the starting point and it's then up to the player to make sure it plays in tune with what's going on around them at any given moment with embouchure adjustments.
Some questions to the original poster are how come you're playing so flat to begin with? Are you completely self taught? Are you new to the clarinet? Are you primarily a sax player? Have you suffered an injury or have a medical condition that prevents you forming a clarinet embouchure? If you can give us some info on your background then we can offer you more help or advice.
I'm not asking anything out of malice here, just out of curiosity to gain better understanding.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: John Morton
Date: 2012-04-09 17:49
Whew! Yes Alseg, I'm using 440 hz. I just spent a few minutes playing scales into the tuner using combinations of the original stock mp and barrel and my present setup. For all combinations, after several minutes' warmup the note pitches start low at the bottom and rise gradually on the way to high C. Best pitch is in the low clarion. Of course there are blips, but that is the overall picture when running up and down scales and arpeggios.
My current setup (Pyne ~M, 61 mm. barrel) produces this pattern, more or less centered about true pitch. The factory 66 mm. barrel and mp show the same pattern around 10 ct. lower. Pyne ~M w/ 66 mm. barrel lowers everything around 20 ct., which seems surprisingly little for a difference of 5 mm. (Generally speaking, it seems I can play a musical line and erase discrepancies of +/- 10-15 ct. with embouchure as I go.)
So I conclude that: 1) the Pyne is very influential, and makes playing with the stock barrel impossible; 2) the radical shortening has (unexpectedly) not done much to unbalance things over three octaves; 3) taking off another mm. or two may not produce major changes. I am inclined to leave things as they are, but as I said at the start I'm just looking for a little headroom if I'm cold and the leader says "let me hear your A".
Chris - since you ask, I began with 5 yrs. weekly lessons from a good teacher, dropped it for 40 yrs. and have been back on it for 14 without instruction, playing jazz and ethnic styles. I play an hour a day. I have never played sax, but half my time is spent on bass clarinet. I was brought up on 2 1/2 reeds, and have never been happy above that.
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