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Re: 63mm barrel for Yamaha Custom CX

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2019-08-17 21:48

The general consensus of any discussion I've read is that people, or at least those whose exposure is mostly to Western scales and tuning, tend to accept or even prefer sharpness over flatness. You may just be demonstrating the point.

That the two barrels don't seem consistent in their effect on the tuning may be because it isn't just the length of the barrel that affects the tuning. It's the total volume of the air column - meaning in this case, the total bore volume. And in some ways the shape of the barrel's bore can affect tuning. Moennig's tapered bore was meant originally to correct sharpness in the upper clarion register of the Buffets he sold and serviced. Your whole clarion register is sharp with the 63mm, and seems to be verging upward toward G5 and A5. Check B5 and C6 and see what they're doing.

Also throat G and A are much sharper with the 63 than the lowest couple of notes are. You probably shouldn't worry too much about E3 and F3 being a little flat - that's very typical of Boehm clarinets and correcting it at the barrel is done at the risk of causing sharpness both in the 12ths of those notes and in the throat notes. Looking at your chart, I'd suggest that your 63 might be overkill and you'd get to a better balance overall with a stock 64 mm Yamaha barrel, which will more resemble the 65 internally and work best with the Yamaha overall bore design. If the 64 is still flat anywhere except the lower extreme, you can still have it shortened if you like.

You'll never get a scale that's completely in tune with itself. The best you can do is have most of the notes within an acceptable range. And you still have to be able to correct for other players' tuning anomalies. IMO (others may disagree) a barrel that will bring your throat tones within 1 or 1.5 cents while pushed all the way in is probably the right length (regardless of where it leaves E3 and F3) unless the result is unworkable everywhere else (meaning that the throat notes are too sharp to the rest of the clarinet to begin with).

Karl

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63mm barrel for Yamaha Custom CX new

SunnyDaze

2019-08-15 23:08