Author: sherman
Date: 2007-05-13 02:17
Hi to all.
My experiences with these clarinets of Ridenour is a bit different. In addition to my A clarinet of which I am very delighted to own, I purchased 6 Bb clarinets from 123 Music, called Allora, over the period of a year. I had been interested in a non wooden, but non plastic clarinet for many years, and because hard rubber had been a choice for large university band section years ago,(I think it was Northwestern that bought a slew of them because of their imperviousness to severe weather conditions), and because of the Essay, "The Myth of Grenadilla" by Ridenour, I really wanted to try some of these. To put it succinctly, they were unbelievably consistant from one to the other. There was little difference from the standpoint of tuning on a meter, timbre, after several days of testing. It figured that they had to be quite similar because they very obviously were mass produced from the look of them, the feel of the keys and because China is not yet a place where hand finishing exists to any degree. No, they were not stuffy at all, not in my opinion,were unusually free-blowing and for the price, I was knocked out. (Yes, I returned them all, except the A))
The Arioso, I got last of all, from a dealer in Jersey perhaps, and it was prepared badly, though it was practically for nothing; it played as the others but the dealer messed the preparation.
My thoughts were , what a wonderful instrument for a student to purchase and even use for everything in preparatio of a career without the terrible expense entailed by the purchase of the french instrument, of which I own a few and have played many over the years. Hence my advocacy of these horns, and my A is discussed above. I have no interest nor relation with the designer, Mr Ridenour, save for the fact that in my set of Opus, I felt as though these were created by a master designer.
My interests lie with the thousands of students crowding into Universities to study clarinet, and the precipice their finances have to climb to get a horn that will always bind, sometimes crack, and in my belief,is not the best horn for many hours a day of long band rehearsals.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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