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An interesting NEW barrel from "Clarinets by Copeland"

Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2020-07-22 22:53

So I happened to stop in to see one of the country's best clarinet repair people the other day while in Louisville and it turns out Jonathan Copeland now offers his own designed barrel courtesy of Wesley Rice.

https://betterclarinets.com/custom-barrels/

Naturally I was curious about it and gave several a "test drive." I gravitated to the wood for the first test. The wood versions of various companies have become my prejudice for ringless barrels because they resonate beautifully (Weir Euro, Martin Freres, Dr. Alan Segal). My first impression is that it is a really good performer but I didn't think it was as loud as I'd like (yes, loud is very important to me). Then I tried the delrin version and POW!!!! There was even more focus and power than I had ever thought about.

Jonathan showed me a cross section design drawing that illustrated how he came to the odd looking external look. He had noticed that the standard barrel design (flare at the bottom) though intuitively normal looking on the outside left the socket at the top with significantly less material around it than the bottom socket (may explain why some manufacturers have cracking problems with ringless designs). His first test samples sounded really promising and that led to this final product.

Interestingly both he and a friend played "blind tests" for each other (as listener) to hear if either material sounded better; and both of them picked the delrin as well.

I need a custom size so I don't have mine yet but I wanted to share and I will post an update down the road.

....................Paul Aviles

Post Edited (2020-07-23 02:32)

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