Author: Wes
Date: 2016-10-27 09:02
Many of those early clarinets were tuned to A435 or so, which makes it difficult to get the bottom end up enough to play at A440, even with shorter barrels.
Many years ago, I had this situation with a pair of fine Buffet clarinets, which had formerly been owned by a player in the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. As I was studying with Mitchell Lurie at that time, he suggested I take them to the late Glen Johnston for retuning, which I did.
Glen agreed that they were too low, so he did several things to them, as follows:
1. He made sure that the bottom pads were high enough over the low end tone holes and may have raised them a tiny bit, by bending keys.
2. The bells were shortened about one ring width, done by Big Mac, also in Hollywood.
3. The bottom tone holes were enlarged a little bit by scraping with his special tool. I assume this included the undercutting.
4. As these were full Boehm clarinets, he felt that there was no need to drill a hole in the bell, but would have if they had not been FB.
5. The inside tapered bore at the bottom end was slightly reamed larger, including the end of the body and the bell entry section.
That is all I remember that was done. The result of his careful work was a pair of A440 well tuned clarinets. Good luck!
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