Author: donald nicholls
Date: 2002-02-19 09:33
ok
firstly- i played on Yamaha for years, a really good Yamaha "custom" YCL 82-2, in don't think they ever sold that in the states- there they went straight from YCL 82 to the 72 model. This instrument was great, sounded good, wasn't perfectly in tune but was better than my (current and loved) R 13...... AFTER winning the ICA orchestral audition competition (competing against mostly Buffets if i remember correctly) and using the Yamaha for more than 10 years, i swapped over to a Buffet R 13, and sometimes regret the move, but most often enjoy playing this clarinet. One day i'll get something better, but this does pretty well for me.
Here's the bad rub- one of my motivating factors was that i knew that the principal clarinet of the orchestra i used to sub in (and was returning to live near) was a Buffet fanatic. He wouldn't use some people as subs, i was told, because of the type (non buffet) of instrument they used!
i was stupid enough to think that it would be smart for me to invest in a Buffet for this reason. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it, really. Still, i got a good clarinet.
BUT, just to support the other side of the arguement.....
i went down to Wellington to play 2nd and Bass Clarinet for Opera NZ, and for 3 weeks played with a guy (who studied with Russ Dagon at Northwestern) who also played a similar Clarinet/Barrel etc. We both played the R13, and it was very easy to play with each other- more than just ease in unison passages or in matching tone etc. You find you can also predict the others playing more accurately intonation wise- you can guess where the pitch will be in the note that is comming up. Maybe it would be like that with any reliable player once you got used to them, but i felt at the time that the similarity of equiptment had something to do with it....
there is, of course, no way of proving this, maybe Mark was just easy to play with, also our teachers both had the same teacher (Mr Hasty) so that may have helped.
just some relevant thoughts. When i was TA at the University of Oklahoma there were heaps of students, many of them from Texas, playing Yamaha. My mother in law swears that my old Yamaha sounded better than my R13 (and she heard me swap between them, trying to prove that the Buffet was better to justify the expense of buying it).
whatever, it's done now.
nzdonald
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