 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: GLHopkins
Date: 2016-10-21 06:00
I just picked up a Buffet pro clarinet made of hard rubber. It has metal tenons and socket. The serial number is 183xx. It plays, but not as well as it should. I plan to do a set-up on it in the near future.
Have any of you ever come across one of these before?
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: jdbassplayer
Date: 2016-10-21 06:26
Wow! I saw one of these a few years ago but didn't buy it. I've been regretting that decision ever since. These were made in the 30s when Buffet was also experimenting with metal clarinets. Unfortunately due to the depression these instruments never caught on. Fortunately at least two manufactures offer pro hard rubber clarinets today for those of us who refuse to accept cracking!
Please let me know how it plays when it's all fixed up.
-Jdbassplayer
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Tony F
Date: 2016-10-21 07:47
I play a hard rubber B & H Imperial. I have a wood one as well, but the rubber one plays and sounds better. Same with Emperors, I have one in rubber and one in wood and the rubber one sounds better.
Tony F.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: TomS
Date: 2016-10-22 16:18
Ditto on hard rubber ... Buffet should go ahead and offer an R13 and/or Festival in hard rubber, IMHO.
Noticed that Brad Behn offers not only MPs, but barrels and bells of hard rubber. Next logical step would be to continue the trend and make an entire clarinet.
Hat's off to Brad for his acknowledgement of the advantages of good hard rubber.
Tom
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Chris P
Date: 2016-10-22 16:51
The main problem with ebonite is the sulphur content which will tarnish silver plate black, so ebonite bodied clarinets usually have nickel plated keywork which some players may be allergic to or some players don't like the slippery feel of nickel plate compared to the more 'grabby' feel of silver plate.
Also ebonite is very prone to discolouration and giving off a sulphurous smell (like rotten eggs) if the finish deteriorates due to exposure to UV light or immersion in hot water.
Older ebonite instruments and mouthpieces may contain lead, so that's always a concern.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2016-10-22 18:29
Chris, very interesting comments about a possible sulfur/rotten egg smell from ebonite.
A couple years ago, I noticed something interesting when purchasing a new sax mouthpiece. The choices were two made from hard rubber, a Fobes (can't remember which model) and a Vandoren Optimum. They were both good, but the two looked and smelled very different from each other. The Fobes had a less polished or less shiny appearance, and had a very slight sulfur smell (not enough, though, to prevent me from buying it). The shiny Vandoren, the one I did buy, had absolutely no odor.
I don't think either mouthpiece was made from rod rubber. I suspect they were molded from slightly different rubber compounds, or perhaps the finish on both is different. Someone once told me there is a little plastic in Vandoren hard rubber mouthpieces, but I don't know if this is true.
I'm not an expert in the chemistry of molded rubber, but perhaps there's a way to produce ebonite that doesn't have discoloration/smell issues. Do Tom Rindenhour's ebonite clarinets have these problems?
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Richie
Date: 2016-10-23 18:46
The body is made out of rubber like Ridenour clarinets? Very interesting. Buffet definitely had a few projects that never took off.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: TomS
Date: 2016-10-23 22:05
Yeah ... my Ridenour clarinets do give off a slight sulfurous smell during hot Arkansas out-of-doors playing ... but the tuning stays manageable and the joints don't swell and seize up ...
Just leads me to believe that we haven't found a really, really good alternative to wood that has no disadvantages. ABS seems to mold with good precision, but apparently not the best in timbre ...
I do prefer silver plating ... the look and the feel of more friction ... but not possible with hard rubber, unless you coated the keys (as Selmer does with their new intermediate clarinets) to retard tarnish.
I played at one outdoors orchestra concert in our wonderful Arkansas hot and humid climate, many years ago (this was a terrible idea ... I don't know who booked this venue ...), and you could smell the varnish burning on the violins. We all looked like we have been through a car wash afterwards ... My Yamaha YCL-62's wood swelled up/distorted to the point that the lower ring key was scraping the one of the tone hole's chimney, and I almost couldn't get the clarinet apart!
Tom
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2016-10-24 18:44
For all you people who think Buffet is and has been one of the only "real" clarinet makers out there - prior to WWII there were HUNDREDS of reputable clarinet manufacturers, and many if not most made instruments out of hard rubber along with or instead of one ones. Don't think that this was any sort of innovation by Buffet. Even given the disadvantages nicely summarized by Chris P, hard rubber is a very good material from which to make clarinets. Variations on the early polymer material "Bakelite" have been used to good effect as well.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Chris P
Date: 2016-10-24 19:19
The only problem with Bakelite is it's very dense and also brittle, so it has the same properties as Greenline in those respects. And it stinks if you scratch or chip it.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
Post Edited (2016-10-24 19:19)
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2016-10-24 20:48
Unbiased historians of clarinet production will tell you that grenadilla got to be the production material of preference based far more on economics than acoustics.
This isn't to say wood clarinets sound bad, but rather, when these trends were established, before the lighter, more stable, and stronger synthetic materials of today, grenadilla's quotient of "machining cost/stability over purchase price" was best. No longer is this the case based on not only dwindling supply of the wood, but these alternative materials.
And I could be dead wrong with my "materials" argument. It won't matter--assuming you agree with grenadilla's over harvesting: which science and market forces already show.
Other materials will need to replace it: rubber, plastic, and variations of the latter Buffet and Backun already use. And quality won't suffer given a second belief I hold:
Quality clarinets are more about workmanship than plastic versus wood versus hard rubber. Materials matter: you can't make a clarinet out of anything, but wood isn't necessary, aside from producer's need to deal with market perception that people think it is.
And even if THAT's wrong, the prior paragraph's first sentence will be the "line" makers use when grenadilla's gone.
===
Why does Buffet put grenadilla shavings in their Greenline instruments?
Because
1) it's a good (but likely acoustically neutral) filler for the Greenline's epoxy, with
2) no marginal cost as the leftovers of wood clarinet production, aside from the now cheaper plant heating alternatives to using this scrap (no joke) in their boilers, as was historically the case, that lets consumers think
3) there's so much acoustical magic in granadilla, that even as Greenline pixie dust it maintains these qualities, that if Buffet didn't use consumers would ask
4) Why didn't Buffet switch materials and cost savings along to consumers years ago.
And lest people think this a cheap stab at Buffet, if this isn't ostensibly plastic (and that's fine) http://backunmusical.com/collections/clarinets/products/alpha-bb-clarinet then what is it?
This entire situation arose from consumers historically equating plastic with cheap, as it began being substituted for metal in products in the 1960-70s.
Today the same plastic doesn't corrode/lasts longer, can be machined with enormous strength, and is lighter in weight, and can be seen as better or worse based on context, not materials.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Chris P
Date: 2016-10-24 21:58
Another problem with ebonite is it is tough going on machine tools, so things like reamers and tonehole cutters are rendered blunt very quickly and will need to be honed far more frequently than if they were used continuously on grenadilla, kingwood, cocobolo and other rosewoods.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Ursa
Date: 2016-10-25 11:31
I've noticed in many old instrument catalogues that clarinet models were often offered in a choice of wood or ebonite, with the ebonite version having a higher list price. Perhaps the machining difficulties mentioned above by Chris has something to do with this.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Matt Locker
Date: 2016-10-25 18:57
I had purchased a hard rubber Buffet when I first got back into playing. Was it a professional level instrument? I doubt it. It was certainly much better than most student level instruments though. It was a very nice playing instrument, although the nickel keys did not give the wonderful feel that I get from the silver keys on my current instrument. It had a copper sleeve through the interior of the upper joint. I don't remember if the lower joint had the sleeve or not.
I actually kind of wish that I had kept it!
MOO,
Matt
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: TomS
Date: 2016-10-26 03:03
The Greenline material wears out the tooling faster as well. I talked to Guy Chadash a few year ago, thinking about one of his barrels in Greenline, because of the better durability. He stated that he had special hard alloy reamers ordered because the Greenline dulled tooling much faster.
Also, as far as the availability of Blackwood, I don't think it is endangered or in short supply. About 90% of it is used for other purposes, such as carved artwork, etc. The quality seems to be down ... just look at the more open grain on current wooden instruments. Hopefully, we started looking at wood a few decades ago and started making changes to assure a good supply for many years to come. Some of the quality issues seem to be from pollution that negatively effects the wood ...
One of the players in a local band, of which I participate, has a Buffet that looks to be about 5 years old, but the wood is smooth and shiny as plastic ... almost no grain. I asked her "when was your clarinet was made/purchased?" 1946
Blackwood hasn't necessarily a better sound than other materials ... it is all subjective. It does have the paradigm of sound that we have came to accept in the last 200 years.
There may eventually be a new paradigm shift, as we have a mix of instruments made of new and different materials.
Tom
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2016-10-26 06:14
With the discussions about the availability of blackwood, there's an interesting alternative, mopane. There have been a few discussions on this board over the years about mopane wood clarinets. Schwenk and Seggelke (and possibly others) offer it as an option.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
