 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: klook
Date: 2010-11-03 16:25
Just curious about this:
I picked up an old French Albert system clarinet that is marked A HP.
The really interesting thing was the mouthpiece: it was a very stubby piece, so short you would have to cut a Bb reed's butt off to make it work.
It was corked to be used with this clarinet for sure, and it also didn't work as an Eb piece as I tried.
My friend Peter, the local mpc refacer and long time player, mentioned the possibility that maybe they built the "hi pitch" aspect of the clarinet into the mouthpiece? Meaning, if the body is the normal length for an "A" clarinet, which it seems to be, could you the make make it hi pitch by using a super duper small mouthpiece?
The clarinet was unplayable and is awaiting new pads in the next week or so, but I'm very curious!
And, what is the typical length of an A LP clarinet? Without the mpc?
thanks!
klook
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2010-11-03 18:21
The relative size of a mouthpiece and the internal dimensions such as the tone chamber (mainly) and bore need to be a match for the design of the clarinet. That is, modern German clarinets use a smaller mouthpiece for this reason, however the mouthpiece by itself makes little difference in overall pitch. Just look at the difference in relative sizes (and distances between notes) on a standard Bb to an A clarinet.
That said, if you use a mouthpiece meant for one radically different pitched clarinet on one that is not, the internal pitch (twelfths etc) will be irrevocably messed up.
.................Paul Aviles
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Author: John Peacock
Date: 2010-11-03 18:51
I've seen an instrument with a butchered mouthpiece like this. It didn't have your markings, but I assumed it was indeed a high-pitch A that had been used as a Bflat (although the tuning would be horrific even after this general shortening, since all the holes would be in slightly the wrong places).
Makers vary, but I think a Buffet style LP A will be about 634 mm without the mouthpiece, whereas an LP Bflat is 598 mm. If a HP A was to be the same as a LP Bflat, the HP pitch standard would have needed to be exactly 1 semitone above concert pitch - i.e. A = 466. In fact, HP was 462.5, so roughly 1/10 of a semitone flat. This means that your HP A will be about 3 mm too long, and the brutal solution is to shave this off the mouthpiece - although I would have thought that shortening the barrel would have been easier.
There is a closely related thread on the subject of B clarinets going on at the moment.
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Author: BartHx
Date: 2010-11-03 22:09
Sounds similar to a problem my brother had. He acquired a 12 key boxwood clarinet and noticed a similar problem with reeds fitting. Using reeds from his Bb Buffet, he could not get it to do anything. He happened to be spending some time at Oberlin and had a chance to speak with their clarinet specialist. The specialist switched him to Vandoren White Masters and the problem was solved. As it is, it plays fairly well in tune at A=440, but we need to make a longer barrel so that he does not have to pull our so far. My lathe and a nicely aged piece of boxwood are waiting. Since I don't own any elephants, I figure we can make a fairly close match using PVC pipe for socket rings.
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