Author: mrn
Date: 2010-02-24 20:43
James--
Did you switch mouthpieces and/or barrels within the last year?
If so, that would be the first thing I'd look at. The odds of your R-13 suddenly having tuning problems like you describe seem awfully low to me. My R-13 Bb is 20 years old and still plays as in-tune as when I bought it. My orchestral partner in crime, pewd, has been playing on his since the 1970s, and his intonation is superb. We still use our original barrels, even.
So my advice, before you start dismantling your clarinet or shopping for a new one, is to go back to the stock barrel and put on a different model of mouthpiece and see if that doesn't alleviate your problem at least somewhat. If so, then I think you will have found the culprit.
For one thing, the M30-13 mouthpiece has a reputation for being difficult to keep up to pitch. The M30 facing length contributes to this, as well as the fact that it is a Series 13 model (which means it's pitched lower than the standard A=442 mouthpieces Vandoren sells).
By the way the notes you describe as sharp and flat are, in fact, naturally sharp and flat on the R-13, though not to an extreme degree. Perhaps the flexibility in pitch you get from using an M30 causes these natural tendencies to become exaggerated.
Post Edited (2010-02-24 21:03)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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