 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Dave Beal
Date: 2001-03-26 18:34
This may sound like a silly question, but why are clarinets designed to be taken apart? I can see good reasons why the mouthpiece and barrel should be removable, namely personal taste and tuning, but why do the joints and the bell need to be separate pieces? For transportation? A fully assembled clarinet isn't that unwieldy - not much longer than a trumpet, and considerably shorter than a disassembled trombone. It wouldn't be difficult to carry around a fully assembled clarinet in a case. And I assume that there are some technical tradeoffs that have to be made to allow a clarinet to be taken apart. Could a better-sounding clarinet be designed if it didn't have to be disassembled?
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Author: javier garcia
Date: 2001-03-26 18:49
AFAIK, at least Rossi, Orsi and Ripamonti make "one piece body" clarinets. I have a A Rossi and the one piece allows for a correct size of the C#/G# hole.
This improves the tone of C# (not stuffy) and the pitch of high F.
Even I was surprised when I saw, on a buffet catalogue, that the new Eb soprano is two pieces bodied!!
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Author: Mario
Date: 2001-03-26 18:57
All clarinets do not necessarily come apart. Specialized instruments (Rossi for instance, like some other boutique manufacturers - Fox, or an Italian manufactuer whose name escapes me at the moment - not Patricolla) keep the join together.
Why not all instruments? There are so many advantages to having unibody construction that this question also puzzles me. For wood instruments, I am told it is difficult to find long, perfect pieces of wood that can be milled reliably on mass-production machines.
But for synthetic instruments, this does not hold. Imagine the new Buffet Epoxy material (greenline) being used to produce unibody instruments with excellent tone, and total durability... Bliss!
A unibody instrument has better intonation, better key placement, is more ergonomics, has better tone (less joint, less metal work), etc. All synthetic instruments should be build in this way. All top-of-the-line pro horn manufacturer should have at least one unibody wood model for their top end offering.
We clarinetist tend to be very conservative in the adoption of new techniques for our instrument. We also complain a lot about tone, intonation, water in tone holes, cumbersome key work. Many solutions exist, but we do not buy them. This contradiction between our desire and our behavior is weird.
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Author: Mario
Date: 2001-03-26 19:09
Javier beat me to it. Orsi is the name I was looking for. By the way, if you want to see a very interesting instrument, have a look at the Orsi: Fabulous piece of engineering (Wurlitzer level), nice features (unibody for instance, a bell that screws, modern keywork), beautiful looks (very Italian), tone excellent, priced well. A nice option for those interesting in getting an instrument off of the beaten path.
I do not believe anybody in NA distributes the Orsi brand (but I could be wrong there). You get to see those mythical instruments (Wurlitzer, Hammershmith, Rossi, Orsi) at places like ClarinetFest.
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Author: Torvald Simmons
Date: 2001-03-26 19:29
maybe they come apart because they're easier to repair, work on, clean, etc that way.
or maybe it's more customizable/ergonomic for a person to be able to turn/twist and adjust the middle joints so that it fits their hands better.
or maybe people like to be able to tune sometimes by pulling apart at the middle.
i dunno...i'm just guessing
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Author: Kontragirl
Date: 2001-03-26 20:49
One very good reason for clarinets coming apart is so they can be repaired easier. I can't even imagine the difficulty there would be doing simple things to clarinets if they didn't come apart! For one, the tech would have to deal with the one long, heavy piece, rather than two, short, lightweight pieces. Then, there are some parts of the clarinet that can only be taken off if the other piece isn't in the way.
They should make plastic clarinets the same way that they make most plastic bass clarinets and contra clarinets. That is, the joints come apart, but they are held together by screws so that it remains in the case in one piece.
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Author: Graham Golden
Date: 2001-03-26 23:00
A clarinet wouldnt be any harder to work on than a soprano sax, the key work would need a bit or ajustment to be able to access all the screws but thats about it.
Graham
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Author: jbutler
Date: 2001-03-26 23:07
Clarinets are not really that much harder to work on if they are one piece. I believe it is a manufacturing design. It is easier to turn a rather hard wood that tends to split with smaller sections, rather than one long section that may crack or otherwise develop a flaw while turning the block of wood on a lathe. Think of the amount of stress that is being relieved on a block of wood, in a relatively short amount of time, coupled with a "spinning" or centrifical (sp?) force being applied at the same time. I think it is necessary on a bass clarinet more so than a soprano. Maybe I'm way off base here, but that's my theory.
John
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Author: Anji
Date: 2001-03-26 23:20
When milling steel or other metalic materials, some heat is generated. This is carried away by coolant and the chip load.
When milling wood, heat transfer is much more difficult. Boring the center often results in fracture at high speed (even Impingo or Grenadilla have natural "fault lines" that yield catastrophic failures in this step). The lathe needs to turn fairly fast in order to yield a smooth finish in fewer passes.
Combining the high incidence of failure with the necessarily long center bore yields a simple building solution; make smaller sections.
Mister Rossi could shed some invaluable light on how he manages the problem. He must have some special tooling or extra steps.
FYI - Guy Chadash still delivers his horns with the familiar two sections.
When mass producing an intricate device (for argument, lets say in excess of 1000 units in a month) balanced forces of final product and speed of assembly yield the sort of design compromise we see here.
(Centrifugal and centripedal)
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Author: lande
Date: 2001-03-27 01:41
For wood clarinets, many of the above posts posit believable production advantages. Also, if you drop the horn and shatter the bell, it is cheaper to replace just the bell.
Sometimes the low notes sound different if you rotate the bell. With wood, the bore may not be exactly circular, so orientation can matter.
Metal clarinets frequently came with a single body with bell and then separate barrel. In some cases the pro models were offered with and without the break in the middle. Usually the price was the same but the extra joint did cost more with Silver Kings (in some years, anyway) Having worked on both, the multi-piece are easier to work on except where there is an articulated C#/G# with the tone hole going through the tenon. Corking those joints is a royal pain. However, a soprano sax is way way harder to repair than any clarinet.
The bridge keys get smashed off of the multi section horns.
Cases for the single piece clarinets take up more room and are heavier.
If (for reasons I cannot imagine) you wanted to play with A pitched very flat (say A=436), it would be handy to be able to pull out all joints rather than just the mpc or barrel.
Some folks like to have the six finger holes exactly lined up and others at a slight angle. Having the break in the middle gives some flexability. (This doesn't work with the tone hole through the tenon, of course, and some metal clarinets had metal stops to make sure you always lined up the same)
Altogether, seems like there is ample reason for some manufacturer of student horns to experiment with a one piece offering.
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Author: Terry Horlick
Date: 2001-03-27 03:49
Most metal clarinets I have seen were one piece. I think the discussion about wooden horns is most interesting.
Here is a photo of the horn I recently found in a swap meet.<BR>
<img border="3" src= "http://www.jps.net/horlick/clarinet.jpg" alt="1925 Buffet and Crampon Full Boehm Clarinet"><br>
This is a 1925 Full Boehm Buffet horn. It plays nicely and is current in being overhauled. Lots of makers make an upper end horn which has a one piece body. Sometimes you just have to look for it. I haven't purchased a new on, and I bet thery are pricey.
I have overhauled one of my soprano saxes myself and I can assure you they are harder and more complicated than any clarinet. There are few instruments simpler than a clarinet (one or two piece body) unless you go to a recorder, occarina, or bugle. To work on any clarinet requires simple tools, nothing fancy. There is nothing on a clarinet which cannot be easily taken apart, serviced and replaced (except the bell ring).
I bet if you turned a horn in one piece with the bell attached you would have trouble finding a blank big enough. There would probably be lots of ruined blanks. Then think of the nightmare if a bell cracked!
Terry
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Author: Jim
Date: 2001-03-27 04:19
As a wood worker, I suspect John and Anji are on the right track. Add to the difficulty in turning the problem of boring the blank leaving rather thin sidewalls. Any alignment error (and I mean very small) will be multiplied as the legnth of the piece increases. What a great wood grenadilla is! The pine/ oak/ poplar/ maple I commonly work with wouldn't stand but a small part of the machining that is needed to produce a clarinet.
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Author: JAZZ
Date: 2001-03-27 04:40
I am only speculating here... I'm a musician but by no means a scientist. Since clarinets were originally made of wood, perhaps the "piece" design was meant to shorten the length of each piece of crafted wood... creating less stress as would be on a single 27" piece (after all, the thing "hangs" in the air when we play it) and, thus, prevents (or at least protecting against early) warpage.
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Author: Stephen Froehlich
Date: 2001-03-27 11:55
There is also a concept in engineering called "residual stress". Its what happens when a part actually pulls against itself. If you have high enough tensile (pulling) residual stress, cracks form. Wood is a heterogenous material, so it is likely to have residual stress in it due to the growing and drying process. Machining will add additional residual stress, as the near-surface layers are moved (plastically deformed) a little bit by passage of the tools. The joint is a point where all that stress is relieved. In a random distribution, the probability of a one-piece clarinet cracking is the sum of the probabilities of each joint cracking minus the product of the probabilities (which is the probability of both joints cracking). I'm betting that because there is no place for the residual stress to be relieved (or taken up by tenon caps) that they probability of a one-piece clarinet cracking is higher than the number mentioned above.
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2001-03-27 12:04
To include the bell in the one piece would mean an enormous waste of a short-supoply timber.
I hate working on 1-piece Eb clarinets. Why? When checking for the source of leaks when they can't be found visually I put a cork in the end of a clarinet section, close the keys with one hand, blow into the other end. The first place the air hisses out as the air pressure is increased is neally always the most significant leak. But it is very difficult to locate by the hiss, so I go over the section squeezing keys hard shut with the OTHER hand. When a squeeze stops the hiss I know I have located an almost certain leak.
With a one piece body I cannot do this because it would require 3 hands.
Servicing usually involves a great deal of turning the instrument around at different angles. It takes considerably longer to do this accumulated turning if the instrument is more clumsy, e.g. a baritone sax takes a lot longer to service than an alto.
I know little about plastic moulding but wouldn't a double length mould cost more to make than two small ones, and wouldn't there be more moulding problems? And wouldn't a bigger machine be required.
To drill the bore in double length plastic would probably create more problems even than with wood. The plastic would heat to a soft state so easily.
Just thinking out loud.
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Author: Roger
Date: 2001-03-27 13:02
Tuning is another issue, previously alluded to. If you pull out at the barrel to make the third space C (B-flat concert) in tune then you can throw out the open G and other notes on the left hand. If, however, you pull out less at the barrell and pull out a little in the middle, the C is in tune but the upper joint is not changed as much.
This would be a good topic for discussion. I.E. People tell where you pull out.
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Author: graham
Date: 2001-03-27 13:13
I once heard someone say that polycylindrical clarinets would be very difficult to machine if there was one long keyboard section. Does that sound convincing??
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Author: C. Hogue
Date: 2001-03-27 13:54
Terry -- Thanks for the picture. I'd never seen one like this. And yours is a FB to boot! When you get it back, let us know how it plays. What brand is it?
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Author: Terry Horlick
Date: 2001-03-27 13:59
This last one brings up a question I have had for years. How is the bore machined? If it is done with a cutting tool shaped to the bore and then run down the center I would think a polycylindrical bore would be really easy to do in production. If it is done by a small cutter being run in by the carriage drive screw (like in a screw cutting setup) then it would probably be tough. I assume a computer controlled lathe would make any bore shape easy to turn with a good, sharp, heavy boring bar.
<font size=+2 color="blue"> <b>Could someone give us a mini-seminar on how bores are fabricated in the better wooden clarinets, please? </b></font>
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Author: Terry Horlick
Date: 2001-03-27 14:13
C. Hogue,
That clarinet is a full Boehm Buffet Crampon from France. There are no other markings except the serial <font color="red"><I>1S270</I></font>. That puts it in 1925. It is interesting that this horn looks to have had a lot of play, yet the white leather pads are good (they look original) and there are no cracks.
Terry
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Author: Nate Zeien
Date: 2001-03-27 16:33
Again, Gordon brings up some very good points. This wood is expensive stuff, and not very common. It makes good sense to conserve. Also, from a repair standpoint, it is harder to work on a one piece clarinet. Just little things that make it a little more of a pain. Testing for leaks, as Gordon pointed out, is about the biggest problem, as most people don't have three hands. It's just a bit of a minor inconvenience. That's all. Manufacturers make multipiece clarinets because it is more economical to do so, and because of the rarity of the wood. Good or bad, it's the way things are. -- Nate Zeien
PS -- Terry, I like colors and different fonts, too, but I don't think they are really necessary here. I think italics and boldface are fine, but let's try to keep from the other html text tags. I find them somewhat distracting. As a rather wise fellow once said: "Just because you <i>can</i>, it doesn't mean that you <i>should</i>." :-)
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2001-03-27 19:05
What an interesting and learned discussion, very enjoyable. Nice Buffet in a Rampone case!! I have a Selmer Paris FB of about that vintage, need it on occasion! Dont some of our "good books" [Rendall etc] describe the mfgr. of our horns? Don
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Author: beejay
Date: 2001-03-27 22:23
I believe that Hotteterre was the first maker to manufacture instruments (flutes, oboes) in two or more pieces. One advantage that it made it much easier to finish and undercut holes from the inside to improve intonation.
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2001-03-27 22:57
The mpingo (grenadilla) tree grows very slowly. A tree big enough to yield full length pieces of the wood may take a century to grow. Up to perhaps 1930, there were very large, old trees still available, and the remnants of slavery in Africa meant that people could be forced to tend the trees for many years. There are many Buffets from around 1930 and earlier that are in one piece.
When the old growth trees were gone, the long pieces of wood were gone, too. That's mostly why clarinets are made in small pieces. There is increasing competition for the wood to make carvings that are gobbled up by white tourists in Africa, and of course you can't force a person to tend a tree for multiple generations.
With the invention of the polycylindrical bore, the upper joint became larger at the top, smallest around the left ring finger sliver key and then larger at the bottom. Although this is only a matter of a few thousandths of an inch, it means that a reamer has to go into the bottom of the upper joint. This is nearly impossible with a single-piece body.
Also, with a center joint, a major crack doesn't require replacement of the entire body.
Luis Rossi makes single-piece bodies, but he uses mostly woods other than grenadilla. For his grenadilla instruments, he pays a big premium, and he charges a high price for his instruments and so can afford to crack a few as he makes them.
Buffet is even making its Eb clarinets with a center joint these days.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Anji
Date: 2001-03-28 12:18
I can't speak for the wood workers, but stepped tapers in metal working usually involve a fixture to hold the drill, bore or reamer firmly in place.
The working piece rotates, the fixture is static (opposite of your standard drill).
A pilot hole is advanced down the center of the work and the alignment is verified.
Reamers of increasing diameter follow, with time taken to remove the chip load.
To achieve a larger bore at a given depth, a "hook" point would be advanced to depth and driven AWAY from the center to achieve the desired internal diameter.
The long axis of this is the limiting step, as the shank of the "hook" point would be under considerable shearing stress.
(My guess is that this is where lotsa failures of tools and the work occur.)
With wood, every step has potential for failure, as the material is not dimensionally stable in all axes (grain, voids, attitude, who knows?) aka heterogeneous.
I don't turn wood, and the more I look over the steps the more I appreciate the artisan's hand.
I also understand why hard rubber and plastic are logical choices.
anji
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Author: graham
Date: 2001-03-28 13:45
I'm really struggling with this idea that long pieces of wood are scarce. What about bass clarinets, basset horns (lower joint is very long), or cors anglais? They cost a good deal, but people have not started doing them multi joint as far as I can see, in order to reduce failure rate and thus price.
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Author: Anji
Date: 2001-03-28 20:49
How many of those instruments do you suppose are made, annually?
My guess is that the cost of them is considerably higher than the soprano clarinet, if they're hand made.
Then again, I don't have BIG letters afta mah naym.
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