 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2017-05-03 00:18
Visited Schwenk u. Seggelke today and spent the day trying instruments. Ended up ordering a set of Boehm French bore enhanced keywork (1000+) instruments in boxwood. I understand this is a relatively common experience for them. Saw more boxwood in various states of completion than in my entire life previously.
The barrels on everything I tried overlapped the mouthpieces, meaning there's more wood on their instruments than we're used to. Regarding the bores, people use words to describe them, but you really need to get the specifics. With their "large German bore" for Boehm instruments, the upper joint starts at 14.85mm and goes to 14.7 mm at the end. The lower joint goes back to 14.85 before the flair. Their "French bore" starts at 15 mm on the upper joint and goes to 14.55 mm. The lower joint starts and stays at 14.65 until the flair. (I asked and they said it was OK to share this.) Pretty wild ride. Tried French & German bore Boehms in grenadilla and boxwood, and a German system in Mopani. Tried the German bores with a Nick D2, a Nick A', and a couple Vandoren German mouthpieces they had. Tried the French bores with an Ed Pillenger and a Peter Eaton 1010 mouthpiece, an Nick Soloist A, and a Fobes Europa. Got nice clarinet sounds out of everything except the French bore boxwoods. Those had an impressive ring, and were just really lively and interesting. My wife did a double take the first time I played one. Don't know if they might be putting too much wood on the Grenadillas, but whatever's going on, the boxwood instruments are special. Made no sense not to go with that. Got an audible ring and stable sound out of the German bores with the Nick A', but could do so much more with the sound on the French bore boxwoods. Different players could reasonably differ between those possibilities.
The separate Bb and register vents on the 1000+s and 3000s makes a big (positive) difference. Personally am quite fond of the Acton mechanism, so I got it. They don't recommend the A/E vent and doubled C keys for the 1000+. Got the German trill keys, because playing F#/C# with just one side key instead of two sounds noticeably better. Unlike 1010s, Eatons and Rossis, their lever for the upper C vent only replaces half the crow's foot, so you've got a crow's foot for C#, but don't have to worry about adjusting the cork for the left-hand C# to match the cork for the left hand C. All the adjustment "screws" are for allen wrenches, so there's less chance of impaling yourself. The 1010 mouthpieces were in tune over the range, but the whole scale was way flat. The Fobes hit 440 on the button and was absolutely stable, so I left it with them to tune the horns. Jochen measured it and said the bore was what he designed the horns for. Delivery in about a year. Business is good for them now.
Tried a Boehm bass--not too long, because I won't be able to afford one for awhile. Really nice instrument. Felt more like a German-system Wurlitzer rather than a Selmer or Buffet. Throat tones stable so they didn't really sound or feel like throat tones at all. Nice smooth sound over the lower and upper breaks, and some innovations you should get Jochen to explain to you. If I played base anywhere, I would have gotten that first.
Nice folks, great horns, but different enough so I wouldn't want to buy them without trying them first. Don't know why more makers aren't trying boxwood.
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Author: Micke Isotalo ★2017
Date: 2017-05-03 11:06
Thank you very much for your detailed and informative report. Very interesting that the French bore actually starts larger than the "large German", though it then tapers down more than the German one.
Some questions:
1) Was the A' mouthpiece your own or did you get if from S&S? If it was your own, is it with standard, large Austrian bore or smaller German bore (special order)? How was the tuning with this mouthpiece on the German bore clarinets? Any major flatness in the first register, especially of the throat tones? I ask since I myself have just recently "discovered" this mouthpiece and I'm very interested in how it works with other instruments than mine (Wurlitzer RB).
2) You mentioned a Nick Soloist A mouthpiece. Did you perhaps mean a Soloist M (or Solist M, in German spelling)? A Soloist A is not found on the Playnick Website, but is it perhaps of some special design? Anyway, I suppose this mouthpiece has the large Austrian bore (around 15 mm)?
3) About the bass clarinet: How was the response around g on the upper line? I ask since on most basses this is a very sensitive area, prone to squeaking and especially on accented notes in forte.
4) You wrote: "Got nice clarinet sounds out of everything except the French bore boxwoods." Since you ordered that latter one, did you actually mean French bore grenadilla, or something else? Which wood and bore wasn't as good as the others?
Micke Isotalo
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Author: Steven Ocone
Date: 2017-05-03 15:57
I just worked on a pair of S&S clarinets yesterday. Wonderful clarinets.
Steve Ocone
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2017-05-05 09:40
Micke,
1. I got the A' directly from Playnick, to try out the S&S clarinets with. They mostly have Vandorens for people to use for instruments they don't already have mouthpieces for, and I don't think they had any Playnicks there. The one I have is Nick's "German bore" version, which they told me is 15 mm. They didn't say what the Vienna version is, but I'm guessing something like 15.4. When you write them, they're willing to customize to some extent. I didn't do the detailed tuning check with the A' that I did with the mouthpieces for the French bore, so all I can say is that it sounded OK with tuning, and had a very stable and consistent sound and feel over the whole range. But I saved the tuner for after I decided on the style of instrument. Since I'm not going to be needing the A', if you're interested in trying it, email me your address at dorjepismo@gmail.com.
2. I got the Soloist A from Howarth. I thought it was going to be a French bore version of their Austrian-style A, but it isn't. It's a lot more open, with a shorter facing length. Don't have a bore gauge so I didn't measure it, but it's sold for use with regular French bore instruments. I haven't played a Soloist M, but I'm guessing that that is more mainstream than the Soloist A.
3. Haven't played bass in years, so it took awhile for me to get comfortable with it, but after I was, there didn't seem to be a break at G, and there wasn't the thing where there's a hitch there because the finger triggers an automatic change in the register vent. The instrument did have two register keys to press. Jochen explained that the one to the right of the thumb key is primarily for jumps to the upper register and for starting on an upper register note softly, but for most passages, you just stay on the normal register key. The evenness and tuning seemed fine doing it the way he described. I know intimately about squeaks and other dysfunctionality on bass, and I flat out didn't squeak on the horn. It didn't even feel like it might have wanted to squeak. It was rock solid.
4. What I meant was that for me, everything else was a nice clarinet sound, and the boxwoods were a lot better than just a nice clarinet sound. We all have different sounds and playing experiences, but for me, the boxwoods were noticeably better, and not in a "bright" or lighter way as I might have expected. My wife thought they were a "darker" sound than the grenadilla ones, but people can mean different things by "dark." I also tried a boxwood German bore C, but a C is different enough from a Bb that I didn't want to base too much on how it played. It played great, though, and had the best and most solid altissimo of any of the instruments I tried. Part of that was probably that it was the only one that had the separate register and Bb vents along with the Bb "schliesser," which closes the Bb vent with some of the altissimo fingerings. Jochen said that the "schliesser" is intended for those altissimo notes. Sure worked on the C horn. Very stable and easy to play right up to top C.
Only tried one Mopani, which was on a German system Bb. Very nice looking, but I liked the sound of the grenadillos better. So for me, the order was boxwood, grenadilla, and mopani. The guy helping me said, by the way, that they don't use dye with the grenadilla, only oil. The ones I saw were all darker than the Buffet Prestige Elites I used to own, but I don't know enough to evaluate his statement on my own. I'd planned, though, to ask for no dye if I'd gotten grenadilla.
On oil, Jochen's definitely of the opinion that one should oil new horns, and that it helps prevent cracking.
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Author: Tony F
Date: 2017-05-05 12:33
Boxwood does have a reputation for being more prone to cracking and warping than grenadilla, so regular oiling might be more important. I've never had a boxwood clarinet, but I have a couple of boxwood flutes that could double as bananas.
Tony F.
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2017-05-08 19:36
Jochen says he doesn't have more or less trouble with the boxwood horns than the grenadilla ones, which isn't a lot, and he's got a few hundred out there by now. They apparently do the boring and shaping gradually over several months, and they seem to oil the crap out of it during that process. Also, they're making the walls a whole lot thicker than period instruments, which is mostly what boxwood has been used for recently.
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2017-05-08 19:51
The thickness of the walls may have much to do with the "special" dark quality of tone that you preferred in the boxwood clarinets versus the clarinets made of grenadilla and mopani woods. Selmer Recital clarinets, with their thick wood walls, have many adherents because of the dark (yet acoustically strong and projecting) tone quality that results, and those players are willing to put up with the added weight.
Are the thick-walled S & S boxwoods heavier than a typical grenadilla clarinet?
Post Edited (2017-05-08 19:52)
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Author: dorjepismo ★2017
Date: 2017-05-08 20:05
They seemed possibly a slight bit heavier than my 1010s, though not much if any. Except for the basset clarinet, which weighed a metric ton. You really couldn't play Mozart on it without a strap. The feel of the thumb keys for the low notes was nicely firm and responsive, though, not squishy like it can be on some basses. I didn't notice much of a difference in weight between the boxwood and grenadilla instruments, which surprised me, but I wasn't paying that much attention to the weight. They were all thicker than anything else I've seen.
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