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Re: The New Forté C Clarinet

Author: Sylvain
Date: 2007-01-22 22:42

Reviving the thread as I just purchased a Forte C clarinet and thought my review may interest some.

I received the clarinet almost two months ago so I have had some time to experiment with it. As far as I know at $750, it is the cheapest on the market and my expectations were not very high when I received the horn. I believe it is built in the Cszech republic by Amati according to the Forte team's specs (Omar "The Doctor" Henderson and Graham Golden).

The clarinet is silver plated and looks like a pro instrument right out of the box. The wood is nice and the key action fine too. One can use a standard Bb mouthpiece on it so it is quite easy to transition from A to Bb to C. The tone is quite pleasant and the clarinet is overall easy to play. When I first got the horn I had some complaints about a couple throat notes as well as long B being flat. Graham took some wood off at no cost to me and it plays very well in tune from low E to C (above the staff), higher than that I am mostly flat, but I suspect it is an embouchure problem more than an instrument problem. The long B is still flatter than most of the horn, but not something that cannot be worked with. I have been playing with different mouthpieces and the VD 13 series are definitely on the flat side, I found an old Selmer C125 that worked nicely and my main mouthpiece (Chadash-Hill) works well too.

As a comparison, I tried an E11 C clarinet from my teacher, and although nicer, it is quite a bit more expensive too. The position of the keys on the E11 suited my hands better (especially left hand pniky key for long C# and index finger of left hand), but its overall tone quality was not really better or more consistent. I'll try to put some sound files on the net for anybody interested.

Overall, I am very pleased with the clarinet and Omar and Graham have been most helpful. If you are in the market for a C, trying the Forte should be on your list.

--
Sylvain Bouix <sbouix@gmail.com>

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