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Ridenour Lyrique 576BC vs Libertas

Author: David Kinder
Date: 2015-11-21 05:24

First, it's great to be back reading and re-reading these threads. It's great that this forum is still here! (Although slightly surprised that the software hasn't seen much improvement in 15 years... but nothing against Mark Charrette.)

I haven't played the clarinet in about 15 years. When I last played, I had a new Buffet Festival Bb clarinet that I enjoyed and later sold. I also had a nice Buffet R-13 made back in the mid-80's... that I also sold. I still have my Vandoren M13 Lyre mouthpiece, a Rovner Dark ligature (which I'll upgrade to a Rovner V-1R - since I used to have an Eddie Daniel's Rovner ligature), and I used to use Vandoren V12 #4 reeds.

I plan to rejoin a community college band just to enjoy playing the clarinet again, and I'll probably play a couple of numbers in church (music transposed for Bb instruments), as well as Handel's Messiah every year with the church.

As I've been doing some research, I plan to buy a professional hard rubber clarinet from Tom Ridenour. I remember back 15 years ago or so when he was promoting the TR147 student clarinet (which apparently had some consistency issues)... but I liked that he was trying to help students be better players with better equipment.

Before I ask the question, please be assured that I have used the search function extensively. (Google and Bing are my friends.) I've book marked quite a few pages and a couple of threads on this topic (including some from clarinetpages.net and Sherman Friedman's Clarinet Corner).

I've chosen to go the hard rubber route because I don't want to spend much time maintaining the wood in a clarinet, worrying about cracking (even though I'm in mild SoCal), nor do I want to have to do a lot to compensate for deficiencies in the manufacturing of a clarinet to get a good sound, tone, or play in tune. It would seem that either Ridenour clarinet would seem to 'fit the bill' perfectly for me for those characteristics.

Keeping cost aside... which of the two clarinets would you prefer and why? And if you use a similar mouthpiece/ligature/reed setup to what I used to use... which clarinet do you think would be the better fit for me?

All replies are appreciated. Thank you for your thoughts!

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