[AntonBergfueher]

I'm lucky enough to live where I can try a bunch of oboes or English Horns at the same time. Here's a photo of what Peter Hurd laid out for me when I was trying out English Horns. I got to try out all the major (and some minor) brands except Howarth (which was on my list): Loree, Malerne, Margeaux, Kreul, Bulgheroni, Fossati... some newer, some older. If I would have bought on description alone, I probably would have picked a newer Bulgheroni, but went with a Kreul based on sound and control.

 

[adjustotone]

I'm lucky enough to live where I can try a bunch of oboes or English Horns at the same time. Here's a photo of what Peter Hurd laid out for me when I was trying out English Horns. I got to try out all the major (and some minor) brands except Howarth (which was on my list): Loree, Malerne, Margeaux, Kreul, Bulgheroni, Fossati... some newer, some older. If I would have bought on description alone, I probably would have picked a newer Bulgheroni, but went with a Kreul based on sound and control.

View attachment 137440

Thanks for mentioning Peter Hurd. He has a great and very informative website. Except that he is critical of F. Loree AK models for being too bright and brash. They seem very popular, but now that he mentions it, I understand what he means. Having just bought my daughter a new AK, I don't want to hear this. He is also correct about the Royale being a duller sound.

My guess is that you would be skeptical of this "blown out" thing...

 

[Taragot]

When I play sax, I often wish there were fingerings like on the oboe to make certain transitions easier, like low E sharp to D sharp.

You mean E flat to D flat I assume? F to Eb would be no problem on sax.

 

[polemonium]

Are you of the view that the material a clarinet is made of doesn’t affect the sound?

(I’m certainly not disagreeing if so, I’m just interested to know, from someone much more experienced than me with clarinet.)

I'm no clarinet expert, but you might be interested in Kyle Coughlin's page with a blind test of him playing metal and (professional grade) wood clarinets: The Metal Clarinet Listening Test

Now of course he's a really good player, and if it were a shmo like me any intonation or tone problems might be more easily heard. But in general, I suspect that when cheaper materials make wind instruments that sound less good, it's due to all the other associated cost cutting, not the body material itself.

 

[BalancedReaction]

I have read that the bores of wooden instruments shrink over age, even with oiling, and this changes the bore proportions, making the instruments play flatter. I could see how that could affect tone. I can't confirm or refute this, just repeating what I saw written somewhere.

There's a video of Morrie Backun working on Ricardo Morales' grenadilla clarinet, where he measures the bore of his instrument, founds out it has shrunk, and reams the bore to the original proportions.

 

[Peter Wright]

I'm no clarinet expert, but you might be interested in Kyle Coughlin's page with a blind test of him playing metal and (professional grade) wood clarinets: The Metal Clarinet Listening Test

Now of course he's a really good player, and if it were a shmo like me any intonation or tone problems might be more easily heard. But in general, I suspect that when cheaper materials make wind instruments that sound less good, it's due to all the other associated cost cutting, not the body material itself.

Thanks for that. I had a listen, and I did actually guess correctly which ones were metal, but I think perhaps more luck than judgement. At any rate, they all sounded stunning!

 

[turf3]

I'm lucky enough to live where I can try a bunch of oboes or English Horns at the same time. Here's a photo of what Peter Hurd laid out for me when I was trying out English Horns. I got to try out all the major (and some minor) brands except Howarth (which was on my list): Loree, Malerne, Margeaux, Kreul, Bulgheroni, Fossati... some newer, some older. If I would have bought on description alone, I probably would have picked a newer Bulgheroni, but went with a Kreul based on sound and control.

View attachment 137440

I don't play oboe or English horn, never going to, but that is a beautiful assortment of instruments. Imagine spending the morning playing through all of those and then taking one home with you!

 

[Taragot]

The culture of doublereed- making and -playing stayed in a more artisanal sphere - a handful of handmade instruments, every reed a piece of livelearning craft, every roller and additional key is quasi custom-made and adds a lot to the costs.
Singlereeds in generally followed more the rules of mass production - standartisations of key sets, reeds ready to play available in shops etc.
This is of course a consequence of the numbers being made, and the resulting price difference is a reason for beginners to avoid doublereeds ....
That's the main reason imo for average oboes (and even more so bassoons) being more expensive than f.e. clarinets and not, as mentioned in the video, the number of keys or the price of this special wood needed.

The price of flutes seems to be set mainly by the material. Flutists can pay unbelievable sums for mechanics or crowns made from rosegold....

 

[adjustotone]

There's a video of Morrie Backun working on Ricardo Morales' grenadilla clarinet, where he measures the bore of his instrument, founds out it has shrunk, and reams the bore to the original proporsions.

Very helpful! Thanks for that. So this aligns with suspicion that this "blown out" phenomenon is perhaps a change in bore diameter over time (it could also be toneholes changing). How fortunate that the bore shrank rather than expanded, and that apparently enough of the same model clarinet (or even a wider range?) use the same bore and taper so that a reamer is practical to have on hand. I wonder about what happens over time when wood is removed from the bore -- in a drier environment, the bore could expand further and that wood is now missing.

 

[mperk]

On the fingerings issue, the oboe/EH is made to play fast runs and trills. They have all kinds of alternate fingerings to make it easier to land on one note from another. When I play sax, I often wish there were fingerings like on the oboe to make certain transitions easier, like low E sharp to D sharp. My Martin Bari doesn't even have the chromatic F#. One fingering combo that's awkward on both is ABCA.

If you're looking for a sax with extra fingerings, you should find one of the old Leblanc 100 altos. It'll take a minute to get used to the extra fingerings, but makes life a lot easier.

 

[Peter Wright]

Very helpful! Thanks for that. So this aligns with suspicion that this "blown out" phenomenon is perhaps a change in bore diameter over time (it could also be toneholes changing).

So presumably, with a plastic instrument… this wouldn’t happen?

 

[Pete Kelly]

I bought my first semi-pro flute in 1998 and I was complaining (boasting) to a pretty young lady at a party how expensive they were. She laughed in my face and told me about cellos.

 

[adjustotone]

So presumably, with a plastic instrument… this wouldn’t happen?

Most likely not, though expansion/contraction with temperature changes could occur with a return to the previous state for a previous temperature, I would think.

Plastic liners might prevent this also, but I don't know how much of it could be due to changes in ambient humidity vs. moisture from playing. The bores of oboes get oiled to prevent moisture absorption (and thus cracking).

Loree offers the same models with plastic liners. The word from oboists is that plastic lined wood oboes don't sound as good as wood oboes. This would not be a popular view here on the forum...but there could be differences between them other than the material.

 

[lostcircuits]

I bought my first semi-pro flute in 1998 and I was complaining (boasting) to a pretty young lady at a party how expensive they were. She laughed in my face and told me about cellos.

Cellos are not too bad but a good bow is what makes it really expensive.

 

[AntonBergfueher]

You mean E flat to D flat I assume? F to Eb would be no problem on sax.

You are correct!

 

[pliskin]

ii'm grateful that i played oboe and english horn for 25 years. it put me in a place where i can imagine learning any instrument i want to practice. since my doublereed playing days, i've played trombone, tuba, alto flute and now baritone sax. and it doesn't bother me to have to put a little time into getting a bari reed to play well. all the reeds in a box can be made to play well, with just a little work.

so when i found that there were bari reeds that didn't play well, i jumped right into my doublereed playing mindset. if you take an american-scraped doublereed blade and flatten it out, it becomes a reed which is flat on one side and has round dados down each side. i now do that with all my reeds. then i know exactly to get them to play well.

i started a thread on sotw, a few years ago, about grinding reeds, but i can no longer find it. it included photos of my reeds and of the equipment that i use to make my reeds. i even called it an american cut reed. but, unfortunately, the legere american cut reed misses a major point. the stock of the reed vibrates, and that contributes significantly to the tone and to the ease of playing. i absolutely love the tone i get with my re-cut reeds and wouldn't dream of playing a reed straight out of the box.

 

[radiopicture]

My first school instrument (4th grade) was oboe, so that was 1971-72. At that time, I was using a Fibercane reed, so they've been around at least that long. In 5th grade, I naturally switched to percussion.

On a strange side note, my uncle Peter Schillke (that's with two Ls, unlike the trumpet and mouthpiece people) created a machine that cuts double reed corks in large quantities.

I have a Selmer bass clarinet, and I worry that during the long periods between uses, the bore will become out of round. I have also heard about clarinets being "blown out", which I think is also some form of bore distortion. Compared with saxophones, it seems that clarinet bore, holes and precision undercutting are all very finicky. For this reason, I think about the aforementioned composite construction (grenadilla powder compressed with epoxy) as a good option for a casual bass clarinet doubler like me. I think the Buffet Greenline model is the same price as the conventional solid wood Prestige model which suggests to me that they are competitive. As with any tech advancement, there will be traditional holdouts and opinions vary, but the stability of such an instrument is very appealing assuming it's comparable in quality.

 

[dirty]

I don't really have enough experience with "blowout" to say if it happens, but it seems like, if the bore changes at all over time, the smaller the bore diameter, the greater the difference that change would make. I have a Buffet pre-R13 clarinet from the 50's that I like, but I have no idea if it plays differently today than when it was new. I wasn't around for that.

If I recall correctly, in his interview on the Clarineat podcast a few years ago, Clark Fobes said that Zinner made a blank whose bore was pretty much what he preferred, but, in practice, variance in the blanks meant that some came undersized and some came oversized. He could ream out the undersized ones to match his specs, but the oversized ones just couldn't be made right (by his standards). His solution was to have Zinner make him a custom blank that had an undersized bore that he would ream out to his exact specifications (with a set of custom-made reamers).

When asked if he did this for the bass clarinet mouthpieces, his answer was something along the lines of "no, the bass clarinet mouthpieces aren't as sensitive to bore differences that small." I suppose it might track that a fraction of a mm change near the top of an oboe's bore is more likely to be perceptible than in the larger bore of a clarinet or the massive bore of a bass clarinet.

 

[Jb5416]

I don't really have enough experience with "blowout" to say if it happens, but it seems like, if the bore changes at all over time, the smaller the bore diameter, the greater the difference that change would make. I have a Buffet pre-R13 clarinet from the 50's that I like, but I have no idea if it plays differently today than when it was new. I wasn't around for that.

If I recall correctly, in his interview on the Clarineat podcast a few years ago, Clark Fobes said that Zinner made a blank whose bore was pretty much what he preferred, but, in practice, variance in the blanks meant that some came undersized and some came oversized. He could ream out the undersized ones to match his specs, but the oversized ones just couldn't be made right (by his standards). His solution was to have Zinner make him a custom blank that had an undersized bore that he would ream out to his exact specifications (with a set of custom-made reamers).

When asked if he did this for the bass clarinet mouthpieces, his answer was something along the lines of "no, the bass clarinet mouthpieces aren't as sensitive to bore differences that small." I suppose it might track that a fraction of a mm change near the top of an oboe's bore is more likely to be perceptible than in the larger bore of a clarinet or the massive bore of a bass clarinet.

That makes perfect sense. Smaller bore size = more vulnerable to minute changes. I have studied with five very highly regarded oboe teachers, and interestingly all of them believe(d) in the "blowout" phenomenon. I also was friends with Jim Mathison, who was the principal oboist for the SF Opera orchestra for many years. He was also a skilled repair person. He had quite the collection of oboes, at least 20 of them, and it was his 1920's Lorees that I played. He believed that oboe bores changed over time, and sometimes that resulted in negative changes to the instrument's tone and intonation. Sometimes is the key word there, though. He had some really old instruments that played exceptionally. I remember picking up a 1950's Loree that had about 10 different pinned/glued cracks. It was one of the best instruments I ever played, even though it looked like hell.

 

[super20dan]

my 1965 leblanc bass clarinet has bore cracks galore that are bound to affect its bore but it still plays perfectly. i have another leblanc from same era with perfect bore inside and cant tell any difference. in play between the 2