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Re: right fourth finger too small

Author: Chris P
Date: 2018-09-02 02:36

A fairly low cost and reversible solution is to soft solder a brass plate to the RH3 ring key with a hole through the centre the same diameter as the RH3 tonehole or marginally wider and pad the underside of it with the correct thickness cork, leather or thin EVA foam disc so it seats perfectly against the top of the tonehole chimney. Another thing that can help is to machine the disc and have a slightly raised edge to the hole so you can feel it better.

That will raise the level of the RH3 tonehole and effectively turn it into a plain tonehole as it'll be lowered by the other RH fingers. I saw this done to a Normandy clarinet and it was fairly easy for me to revert it back to its ring key form by unsoldering the brass ring and removing the soft solder from the ring key.

A more costly solution is to have a separate/independent fingerplate for RH3, but that will involve adding an extra pillar and recutting the tonehole chimney to turn it into a countersunk tonehole as the fingerplate will be padded like the other keys. It can be linked to the remaining RH ring keys via an adjusting screw, but that will further increase the cost of the conversion.

There have been clarinets built with part covered action which had around three fingerplates (including one for the left thumb)- Vito/Holton offered them and I think Bundy did too. While 'short reach' bassoons and flutes and even some oboes are offered with some fingerplates or fingerplate extensions, somehow clarinets aren't offered in short reach forms when they can be.

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

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right fourth finger too small new

SunnyDaze

2018-09-01 15:32