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Re: Clarinet Key Silencers

Author: clarnibass
Date: 2018-12-23 12:22

Nylon is the most common material, you can use a guitar string. I compared teflon and nylon and any difference in feel is completely unnoticeable, so I prefer the more reliable gluing of nylon. Although it's very rare that it comes off either way so not that critical. That said, I don't particularly like that modification and even reverted it back a few times.

There are the two separate issues of the feel and the travel of the lever.

>> fit it right into the corner of the piece and drill into it at an angle so the point of contact between it and the RH F#C key is as near to the RH F/C key barrel as you can get for a snappy action with very little travel in the LH F/C key. <<

It depends on the instrument. In some cases putting it where you'd get the least travel of the F/C lever would be too little travel and won't have a good feel. Moving it closer to the key would also increase the force necessary to move it, but...

>> Fitting it any further back will only result in a mushy action with too much travel in the LH F/C key - it'll feel like the new Buffets that have an adjusting screw on the RH F/C key which makes contact too far back on the LH F/C foot. <<

Yes exactly, for whatever reason they made it so there's a lot of travel for the lever. Who knows why...

>> This is a brand new horn and perhaps they improved the key work recently. <<

Maybe. For a while before they added the screw, this linkage was very inconsistent in the way it was shaped and soldered. Some clarinets had a drastic angle with a sharp edge. Maybe they changed the adjusting screw position very recently.

Before the adjusting screw, Buffet had (for decades) a pretty sharp edge against squishy cork or their spongy synthetic cork. So even with the increased travel, also being farther away from the key hinge, I can see why some players would prefer the new version... if those were the only options. So it's possible that this is what you like, even though yours has the "bad" position with the long travel. Without making drastic design changes (such as moving the location of the hinges), they can do a temporary linkage to find the best position for the contact point. It can be moved closer to the key significantly before the feel gets worse than the lever travel.

Some clarinets had a better design, closer to the ideal of rolling instead of sliding. I also like the idea of newer Selmers, with a "normal" linkage but an adjusting screw on the lever side, only used to remove play.

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