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Re: Plastic clarinet vs. Wooden clarinet

Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2019-11-25 23:32

I have tried several B12s and they were the most hideously out of tune clarinets that I've ever played. I speak of internal pitch, which is to say you can get one set of notes to play relative to a tuner but then another group goes way out of tune.......HOPELESS.

That isn't to say that plastic (or other than wood) is inferior. The point is the same that I made in the plastic mouthpiece thread. Plastic is cheap and easy to work with. Therefore, when you have an instrument that is made on the quick, without any time taken for the niceties of intonation or any sort of craftsmanship, it is usually made of plastic. The cheap horns therefore just happen to be plastic.

There are top of the line Buffets made of epoxy like stuff with wood dust thrown in called Greenline. These horns have proven that wood is not a necessity for the production of good sound. There are old silver bodied instrument (some even double walled that look just like a regular clarinet) that are said to also be just as good as the best wood instruments.

Truth is, that the minutia of creating all the correct measurements and doing the finishing (correcting for pitch even when the dimensions fail) takes many many hours and talent. This is really where the expense lies in creating a musical instrument.

I'd toss the B12 in the trash if I were you.

.................Paul Aviles

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