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Re: Boosey & Hawkes Symphony 1010

Author: Chris P
Date: 2015-05-23 13:49

The serial number is from 1983, so it's a fairly late one. I had one from around 1982 very briefly - I didn't get much of a chance to play it as I let someone borrow it one day for a show and they promptly bought it off me pretty much there and then. I had rebuilt it and cork padded it down to the Acton vent (which is a very handy gadget to have) and leather pads for the largest pads.

My main gripes with these clarinets being they glue the pads (Gordon Beeson leather pads) in with Evo-Stik so they can't be adjusted should they need to be, the long rod screws are only the full width at the ends and narrow along most of their lengths and not always concentric with them (and the threads can be eccentric to the rod screws too), that dreadful sliding linkage for the F#/C# link to the F/C key and the adjusting screw tips aren't rounded off. Oh yeah - they drill the flat spring screw hole all the way through the throat A key arm and it's right under the adjusting screw tip.

But apart from that, they are nice clarinets. Some people have some tuning and intonation issues with them, but it's a case of understanding what problems there are and also how to effectively deal with them.

With the Acton vent, as that makes B/F# a fully vented note, it also allows you to play altissimo D#/Eb with the oxx|oxo (Ab/Eb) fingering which is flat on clarinets without it fitted on account of RH2 being closed. The Acton vent compensates for the closure of RH2 so there are effectively no immediate toneholes closed below the RH ring key vent (C/G tonehole) so B/F# issues from the B/F# tonehole (RH1) and the venting isn't diminished by having RH2 closing the tonehole immediately below the tonehole B/F# issues from. Reform Boehms often have this feature for the same reason to 'unfork' a forked fingering.

Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.

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