Author: RWodkowski
Date: 2021-11-11 17:47
John - is your pair an originally matched pair? Those serial numbers seem a bit far apart to be maybe?
I have never encountered any information about the pre-war A clarinets requiring a specific barrel taper. If so, wouldn’t they stamp them so players could identify that clearly? Thurstons A clarinet barrel measured as it should from what I recall - .6 and straight. At least as straight as an 80 year old barrel can be. From other pre-war A barrels that I have owned, which were not matched to the clarinet, they also had standard straight bores. I have heard of players using 926 barrels on their pre-war clarinets, but those were instruments that were used for many years and quite possibly warped and contorted, or were not that well made to begin with.
My oldest pair of pre-wars did require the long barrel to be used on the A clarinet. As I warmed up on Bb I could use both. Jon Steward told me that BH were still ironing things out with their tuning in the late 30s and things varied - also it depended on which workman finished the clarinets - Clark, Smith, also Reynolds, I forget the other names. When comparing my former pair which belonged to Nicholas Tschaikov to his colleague Frederick Thurstons pair, they did play differently and had slightly different physical characteristics. Looking at the ledger, they were finished by different craftsmen. Obviously they were played well after their original owners passed away, however it is clear that the pre-war instruments varied quite a bit, and players had to do whatever was necessary to make them work with barrels and mouthpieces.
One last thing to keep in mind about the pre-war BH clarinets - not many were made, and quite a few went to professionals. Some were adjusted at the factory for them, as is indicated in the ledger, hinting it. This may be a contributing factor with barrels lengths, certain tuning adjustments, etc that we encounter today when studying them.
Post Edited (2021-11-11 18:25)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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