Author: jcm499
Date: 2021-11-22 21:31
I have gathered a general consensus that advances in acoustical design have improved the performance of modern clarinets—polycylindrical bores, undercut tone holes, and so on. Is this really so, to an appreciable degree?
My first clarinet when I started playing was a then-current model Buffet E12 (Schreiber-made, circa 1998) with a polycylindrical bore and undercut toneholes. As a teenager, when I needed an “A” clarinet to play in orchestra, I got a then-current model Noblet 45 (circa 2006). As an adult, I bought myself a Selmer Centered Tone R series (1958).
These clarinets all have basically the same tuning tendencies for me: sharp in the right hand chalumeau, flat throat E-F#, and sharp on both long clarion B and C and short clarion B and C. Most troublesome to me are the sharp lower clarion notes, because they are not very flexible and I can’t always voice them down as much I would like. I know many people complain of a flat bottom F, but I have not had that issue.
But if anything, the Centered Tone tunes the best of them, better than the polycylindrical Buffet. It is also the most even in tone and resistance across the registers. I know the Buffet is an intermediate model, and the Selmer was a pro model in its day. But the Buffet is allegedly still the inheritor of many alleged acoustic improvements over the intervening decades. And the average intonation results recorded for the new Selmer Privilege in an Arizona State University study are decidedly worse than what I get with my Centered Tone, a model with reputedly troublesome intonation. https://cloud.selmer.fr/index.php/s/jToPN9wDHHwoGeL#pdfviewer
Of course I would like to improve my tuning, but I am not convinced thousands of dollars on new equipment would help, nor am I convinced, based on my admittedly limited firsthand experience, about the acoustic inferiority of older clarinets.
What is the community’s firsthand experience with this?
Post Edited (2021-11-22 23:11)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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