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Re: Normal Level of Tune

Author: snilsson
Date: 2013-11-25 22:40

It's difficult to find hard facts about this, but since I've bought no less than three clarinets in the last 6 months, and tested a few more, I can at least give you some anecdotal evidence.

A few months ago I bought a pair of CSG Yamaha clarinets and both of them have close to perfect intonation. Every single note, including the most common alternate fingerings, in the first three octaves is spot on, i.e. much less than 5 cents off. The exceptions are the bottom E and F. They are noticeably flat at loud dynamics. This is quite common with most clarinet brands. In fact, Yamaha offers a special key to compensate for this as an optional feature.

I also recently bought an intermediate YCL 650 Yamaha Bb clarinet. The side Eb/Bb was 5 cents flat, but everything else pretty much perfectly in tune.

All three of these instruments were bought straight out of the box and I never tested any more instruments of the same model.

During my 40 years of clarinet playing I've been using plenty of other instruments, mostly Buffets, and none of them had intonation anywhere close to this. In fact, I recently tested a Buffet Divine A clarinet and the clarion G of that instrument was more than 10 cents off. Make of that what you want.

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