Author: TomS
Date: 2014-10-24 05:30
Gosh! I think is insane that you have to go through a bunch of the same model clarinets to find a good one! What happens to the other clarinets that are rejected? I know, I know it's a partially subjective selection ... but some factors such as tuning should be a non-negotiable.
Hopefully all the R13s you try should not be just out of the box, but should have gone through a good shop and adjusted and checked by an expert in this area. Maybe not a $750.00 customization, but a few minutes checking pad clearances, spring tensions, bridge key adjustments, crows foot, vacuum sealing, etc. This is most important, IMO.
Be sure to warm up the horn well and swap out before final playing judgement.
If you find an instrument that you like, but maybe with a few minor blips, see if you can take this instrument to a technician right away and if the problem can be tweaked away without theoretically having to take some wood out of the instrument (tone hole work, for example). Sometime really good clarinets are rejected because of an easily rectified mechanical problem. They could have missed a detail in the setup or something might have changed ...
And, take a couple of breaks during your selection process, don't play for hours, frantically trying to decide. If you can't pick between two or three instruments, that's probably a good sign that the horns are fairly consistent. You will adapt and compensate for minor differences. Don't get crazy!
I think that occasionally plain vanilla R13s have many great things accidentally coming together, the wood, the craftsmen, new tooling, etc. Icing on the cake! My R13 was one in a hundred, in it's playing. Not so good in the cosmetic department, but a joy to make music.
Best of luck!
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