Author: SecondTry
Date: 2023-06-01 20:58
This opinion post was inspired by the prior one on Mopane wood. Apologies for its length.
Grenadilla is becoming scarcer. At least on that we can agree. Wood instrument manufacturers are trying to find substitute woods, some of which like box- and rosewood have reputations for greater dimensional instability than grenadilla.
What follows I suspect will earn its share of dissenters, perhaps justifiably so.
Still more, if you subscribe to Tom Ridenour's grenadilla myth (disclosure and conflict of interest stated: a predominately hard rubber clarinet maker today) you believe that grenadilla was originally chosen for instrument creation not so much because of its beautiful sound qualities but because it was more reliable (i.e. less costly) for manufacturers to machine than other materials, resulting in less pieces that would catastrophically fail when lathed—all mind you before the advent of plastics in consumer goods post World War II.
Let me rephrase that. It's not so much that grenadilla ISN'T capable of becoming a wonderful sounding instrument, rather, the idea that other materials might not as well create beautiful sounding instruments is a bit of a misnomer I submit. Hard rubber, and plastics (including acrylics) are some of the materials that come to mind as substitutes. I have a golden era R13, and no financial “horse in this race.”
As plastics began to emerge in consumer products in the 60s they developed a reputation for being a poor person's substitute for the real thing and less expensive. And many of those plastic goods were less than high quality, in addition to being put into mass produced designs that themselves were knockoff substitutes for wood, fabric, and glass. No less so was this the case for beginner musical instruments, where cost was kept down by both the relatively inexpensive cost of the plastic material, and perhaps more so the lack of craftsmanship in such mass produced items. The marketplace, including if not especially that for musical instruments has come to associate plastic with inferior quality.
But I submit that this need not be the case. The lack of “greenness” of plastic production notwithstanding in its hydrocarbon origins, I think the material, and its potential for dimensional stability may get a bad rap and needs a second look in this ever scarcer grenadilla world.
Were comparable craftsmanship put into plastic instruments I suspect it could lead to some wonderful sounding and playing (and lasting) instruments. Buffet's Green Line offerings, which are essentially epoxy mixed with grenadilla wood shavings from grenadilla clarinet production: shavings that use to literally heat Buffet's factory: well, if that isn't a plastic instrument then its only because of some organic chemistry definition.
Even for those who believe, I might argue falsely, that grenadilla has some magical acoustical properties, mashing it up into shavings and binding it with epoxy certainly can't be a recipe for it maintaining such sound characteristics, can it? And Morrie Backun's Alpha Clarinet, which by the way earns high marks as an entry level instrument, what do you suppose its material description as “Premium Synthetic” might also be known as? I think those who cough the word “plastic” as their response might be on to something.
I must commend Buffet. The Greenline clarinets are marketing brilliance. It answers the question, “how do we introduce a plastic clarinet when we've for years expounded ever scarcer wood to be the superior material, all while making use of all this scrap grenadilla from our conventional production line, when countless other and cheaper woods exists to run our factory's heating plant in Winter?”
It is possible that wood instruments dominated in part because the more expensive cost of machining them over plastic was more than made up for in the higher prices and cache consumers would pay for them? Is it possible that for manufacturers to introduce a high end plastic instrument today might have people unwilling to pay its price given their association of the material with cheapness in price and quality? It is possible that an amazing instrument made of such material today might have owners wondering if manufacturer profit was more important all these years than value?
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The Clarinet BBoard
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