 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: RobertG
Date: 2014-10-22 18:17
I am about to buy a new R13. I am going to a dealer that has a large inventory. I am looking for advice on how to winnow down my choices to one instrument. Tips on procedure or things to look for are all appreciated.
My one request of responders is to please not change the topic of this post to new vs old, Buffet vs another brand, or R13 vs another model. All worthy topics, but for this post I am hoping to get some advice on how to select a clarinet among several choices of the same model.
I would really appreciate some suggestions
Post Edited (2014-10-22 18:18)
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Author: rtmyth
Date: 2014-10-22 18:23
There are articles in The Clarinet on this subject. One is titled How to Select an Artist Clarinet. It appeared about 25 years ago. I'll add, try before buy.
richard smith
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Author: James S
Date: 2014-10-22 18:56
Robert,
Shoot me an email; I'd love to guide you through the process!
James
Owner, James' Clarinet Shop
Www.jamesclarinetshop.com
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2014-10-22 19:26
First I do a quick suction and positive pressure test to make sure that pads are sealing well. If they are not ideal, no worries as long as the horn is playable. Realize that a better seal will only make it better. The same goes for spring tensions.......that can be adjusted all you want once you've found the right horn.
I do start of with a known mouthpiece/reed combo on MY horn just to have a 'starting point' for the room acoustics and how I am playing at the moment.
The basic premise is to find a horn you ENJOY playing. So the first thing is to just play a little on the horns in front of you and find the ones that you find fun and easy to play. This is the fun part. Just noodle, use excerpts you know and love etc.
Now that you have the one's you like to play selected you have to 'go to work.' Pull out the tuner that you brought (or have the store loan you one for this) and start the process of finding all the quirks of tuning of each 'good' horn. You need to test all registers and all the vulnerable areas such as throat notes, altissimo notes, low E (for example). The one that has the easiest tuning irregularities to deal with is YOUR HORN (all clarinets are a series of compromises in tuning). You DO NOT want a horn were the note to note tuning is hard to adjust on the fly. This will usually always remain a problem and that's just what you want to avoid.
Enjoy!!!!
..................Paul Aviles
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Author: Clarineteer
Date: 2014-10-22 22:10
Also before playing each instrument check to make sure that the tenon rings and bell ring is not loose. Seeing that you are in Langhorne, PA or near there the recent lack of humidity might loosen some rings due to wood shrinkage. I am near Langhorne and a couple of rings became loose this week on my instruments.
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2014-10-22 22:49
The only issue I see with the above advice is that those are technical problems that can be fixed with relative ease. I would not be discouraged from a horn that plays really well in tune with the response I want if it had a loose ring or stiff spring or slightly leaky pad.
....................Paul Aviles
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Author: tims
Date: 2014-10-23 09:37
I have one, and only one suggestion.
We often judge an instrument by playing all the passages, intervals, slurs and such which experience has taught us are the most difficult and then check pitch on all those notes which we currently struggle to get in tune. After playing dozens of instruments, we think we have found one that stands out from the rest only to take it home and find that, yes indeed, it fixes all those old problems, but in the process it has introduced a half a dozen new problems where there been none before. We do this because we are trying to make the selection process manageable by focusing only on known problems. Likewise when simply looking for defects, we again concentrate on the common ones and will often overlook a more serious, but less common defect.
Play several passages that you wouldn't expect would give you problems. Check the whole range, including alternate fingerings and harmonic fingerings, for pitch. Yes, have a checklist for common defects, but take the time to just look for anything that just seems unusual.
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Author: TomS
Date: 2014-10-24 05:30
Gosh! I think is insane that you have to go through a bunch of the same model clarinets to find a good one! What happens to the other clarinets that are rejected? I know, I know it's a partially subjective selection ... but some factors such as tuning should be a non-negotiable.
Hopefully all the R13s you try should not be just out of the box, but should have gone through a good shop and adjusted and checked by an expert in this area. Maybe not a $750.00 customization, but a few minutes checking pad clearances, spring tensions, bridge key adjustments, crows foot, vacuum sealing, etc. This is most important, IMO.
Be sure to warm up the horn well and swap out before final playing judgement.
If you find an instrument that you like, but maybe with a few minor blips, see if you can take this instrument to a technician right away and if the problem can be tweaked away without theoretically having to take some wood out of the instrument (tone hole work, for example). Sometime really good clarinets are rejected because of an easily rectified mechanical problem. They could have missed a detail in the setup or something might have changed ...
And, take a couple of breaks during your selection process, don't play for hours, frantically trying to decide. If you can't pick between two or three instruments, that's probably a good sign that the horns are fairly consistent. You will adapt and compensate for minor differences. Don't get crazy!
I think that occasionally plain vanilla R13s have many great things accidentally coming together, the wood, the craftsmen, new tooling, etc. Icing on the cake! My R13 was one in a hundred, in it's playing. Not so good in the cosmetic department, but a joy to make music.
Best of luck!
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