 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Tony F
Date: 2013-12-09 00:01
A few months back I saw a clarinet offered on EBay that was described as "An old Japanese clarinet". The bell and keywork shouted Boosey and Hawkes, and it had plain silver rings. I bid for it, and to my surprise was the only bidder. I got it for $30. The only thing Japanese was the Yamaha 4C mouthpiece, and it was in fact a hard rubber 926 Imperial.
I put it aside until I had time to look at it, and did so last week. It's hard rubber, and had faded to a sort of greyish biscuit colour, but mechanically it was in fine order. It shows signs of use, with some wear on the plating and has rods rather than point screws. I repadded it, redyed the body and set it up, and it is now perhaps the best tuning and sounding instrument that I have. It sounds significantly better than my much newer wooden Imperial and my German-made E11. It's certainly not an R13, but in terms of performance it's not far behind and at $30 I can live with the difference.
Tony F.
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Author: donald
Date: 2013-12-09 01:16
The interesting things about old hard rubber clarinets is that the bore is more likely to be "as the maker intended", compared to wooden clarinets "of age". (there is no doubt that many wooden clarinets play excellently after years of use, but many also have their dimensions compromised). dn
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Author: John Peacock
Date: 2013-12-09 13:30
How did you redye the body - and would this work on old discoloured mouthpieces, do you think?
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Author: Tony F
Date: 2013-12-09 14:26
Hi John,
Following some posts on this subject a few months ago and some advice from Tom Ridenour on what they use, I bought some Fiebings leather dye in USMC black and applied it with a cotton bud swap. When it had dried, about half an hour, I wiped off the surplus colour with a rag and applied a coat of hard wax polish. It works amazingly well, the instrument body is now a lustrous deep black. This is not a coating, it's a dye so it's permanent and won't wear off.
I'm not sure that I'd use it on a mouthpiece, I don't know enough about its toxicity. It's marked on the container as an irritant. I tried this as something of an experiment, and so far I'm delighted with the result and I've had no problems from it.
I've had good results on a discoloured hard rubber mouthpiece using fine wire wool to abrade the surface and get down to unfaded material. It didn't remove enough material to affect the performance of the mouthpiece, but if you do this be aware of the risk of altering the characteristics of the mouthpiece.
Tony F.
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Author: Caroline Smale
Date: 2013-12-09 18:59
From the description of mechanism I would think that the clarinet dates from early to mid 50s (typical serial range say 60-90000).
Those were days when B&H still had some of their older craftsmen working on the professional instruments and standards were definitely higher than in later years.
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