Author: Ralph Katz
Date: 2017-04-12 21:10
Here I stick my foot in it.
There are definitely two schools of thought here. My experience with blown-out horns ends with a 1990 R13, which sure acted "blown-out" until Meridian Winds in MI did a whole-9-yards overhaul 6 years ago. It was depressing how well it played afterwards. It is on its 3rd barrel, which is another story. But, this is still my go-to horn to play for dancers.
The clarinet is so acoustically goofy that clarinetists like to believe in geniuses and magic. The player is so involved in all of the conscious and unconscious reactions which are necessary to produce clarinet music, that it can indeed seem like magic, even though it is just physics.
Stephen Fox's white paper on clarinet acoustics shows what we are up against. If you can get past your reflexes to verify what is there, lots of stuff may start to make sense.
Wood ages, but if there is no physical damage, as time goes by, an instrument should continue to respond in the a consistent manner. Wood is not completely stable, and absorbed material from the players saliva can change how the bore dimensions change with specific wood humidity, which is of the most concern. Oiling the wood may help, but you always run a gauntlet between using enough oil to seal the wood and using so much that you gum up tone holes and pads.
My feeling is that if your bore is not damaged, the wood has been treated kindly, and all of your pads are sealing correctly, then your horn should play well, regardless of age. If the tuning does change with age, you had better adapt. Your Bb and A "pairs" probably tune quite a bit differently, so you should already be adapting a lot.
My 4 most-used horns all play well: 2010 R13 Bb, 1990 R13 Bb, 197x R13 A, 19xx Noblet A. The R13 A had an issue recently, and I played Debussy on the Noblet, which was just fine. They are sure different instruments, though.
Paul Schaller is said to have played a big chunk of his career on a pre-war Buffet Bb which used to be his father's. Mr. Schaller was pretty tight-lipped with me about what reeds he used, how he broke them in, and how he handled instrument maintenance. Someone in Ann Arbor owns that Bb now, but I have not been successful in getting her to let me play it, so don't have any direct experience. Another friend grew up as his neighbor in Detroit when air conditioning was not common, and says that Mr. Schaller's playing was determined by how much he practiced much more so than any possible magic.
A good experiment would be to buy 2 clarinets that played as close to identically as possible, use one, and seal up the other one. Then, in 20 years, overhaul them both, and see how they compared. News at 11.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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