The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Clarineteer
Date: 2012-12-18 23:19
Can someone please tell me what the standard length barrel is for the Selmer N Series. Thanks.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2012-12-19 07:30
67mm is the standard barrel length for these.
A lot of them get shortened to 62mm which is far too short for use with Selmer or Vandoren (or other French style) mouthpieces.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: Clarineteer
Date: 2012-12-19 08:16
I just received an N Series with a 62MM barrel and it did not seem correct. I have not checked the tuning yet but it must be off. I wonder why they would want to shorten the barrel.
Post Edited (2012-12-19 08:17)
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2012-12-19 08:42
Over here (in the UK) this is generally done for sax players who double on clarinet but don't play with a clarinet embouchure and consequently play flat, so they have their barrels shortened to raise the pitch of the clarinet so they can still play it with a sax embouchure. It doesn't raise the putch uniformaly as you've noticed.
The hard part now is finding an original 67mm barrel from this era - I had to do the same after I bought my old CT full Boehm and then found one on eBay some months later.
Just a case of keeping an eye out for a 67mm, or even a 68mm one and have it shortened. If in doubt, they either have the logo and 'Made in France' on the front above the lower socket ring and have unplated nickel silver socket rings, sometimes with just the Selmer logo only, but the rings are usually unplated.
I don't know if any barrel makers offer replacement barrels for N series or CT clarinets as so many of them get shortened and it's getting increasingly rare to find original 67mm ones.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: Pastor Rob
Date: 2012-12-19 12:06
My Selmer full-Boehm has no letter in the serial#, just four digits. The barrell it came with is obviously not the original. It is 66 mm and has the Selmer logo, no "made in France" and the bore is visibly smaller than that of the upper joint. It plays nicely though. My tech thinks that if I find a barrell with the original dimensions it would give it more of that classic big bore sound. I am pretty satisfied with it as it is, but I'd really like to have something closer to stock as well. Would Chris or anyone else know what the standard length for a barrell that early might be?
Pastor Rob Oetman
Leblanc LL (today)
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Author: Clarineteer
Date: 2012-12-19 12:08
I do have a 67MM Selmer Barrel from the old early k Series with the old Selmer logo that looked like the Buffet logo so they changed to the circular logo. Is that sufficient?
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Author: Pastor Rob
Date: 2012-12-19 13:25
I am not sure. Were the k series big bores?
Pastor Rob Oetman
Leblanc LL (today)
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Author: SteveG_CT
Date: 2012-12-19 13:49
Pastor Rob wrote:
> I am not sure. Were the k series big bores?
>
IIRC my K-series has a bore of ~15mm at the top of the upper joint so they were large bore but the barrel may not be an exact match for the later N-series Selmer clarinets. At some point selmer started using a slight reverse taper in the upper joint and the bore size at the top of the upper joint became more like 15.1-15.2mm. I'm not exactly sure when the practice started but my early P-series CT was made this way so it's possible that some of the N-series instruments may have this configuration as well.
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