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.
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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.
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