Author: NOLA Ken
Date: 2020-07-14 20:00
From the late Sherman Friedlander's Clarinet Corner. From the horse's mouth to the horse's mouth, so to say:
"I have it from the source of Tom Ridenour that Vito Pascucci, the
head of Leblanc USA, when Tom Ridenour was their chief clarinet designer, had many Leblanc clarinets rebored to a larger diameter in a somewhat routine manner, until Tom stopped him. This is absolutely true and many players have purchased these horns, rebored without care for anything except making a “so-called” bigger sound from the bigger bore. It is no longer an issue because Leblanc Clarinet as a USA company is no more, rather it is part of Conn-Selmer. But the vintage horns of the Leblanc are all somewhat suspect and if rebored, can have manifold intonation problems. So, be forewarned. Here is a response from Tom himself concerned with this article:
“Well, what you say is true, but here are some important addendums:
Large bore clarinets were largely abandoned by pro clarinetists in the last half of the 20th century because of low register right hand sharpness. Small bores were chosen because the 12ths were truer, especially in the right hand of the clarinet. Mr. Leblanc had designed small bore clarinets and they tuned up to the state of the art. Vito, with the dumb idea that the bores would shrink from France to Kenosha, and thinking that large bore clarinet
was fungible with the idea of large bore trumpet or brass instruments, took it upon himself to rebore these clarinets to make sure they blew with a “big sound”. As his shop people enlarged 14.65 bore clarinets to 15.00mm bore clarinets, he was unaware he was destroying the tuning of the 12ths, especially the right hand 12ths, making the right hand low register as much as 30 cents sharp to the rest of the horn. Vito, not understanding clarinet acoustics, thought the switch to small bore clarinets was just fashion and personal taste and that someday the “fashion” would swing back the other way. He was wrong; the switch came about because of higher demands for tuning perfection. And that, not subjective taste or fashion, ushered in the age of the small bore clarinet, especially since bore modifcations had made them tonally viable and equal to their large bore counterparts. I stopped the boring because good horns that played great and tuned very well were being systematically destroyed by energetic ignorance and wrong-headedness. There you go; straight from the horses mouth.”"
Full article can still be found online at:
https://clarinetcorner.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/its-really-a-big-bore/
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