Whatever happened to the Full Boehm?

4/9/2018

I've worked on a lot of clarinets in the last 12 years, but admit to having a soft spot for the Full Boehm: the mechanism solves many technical issues, the tone tends to be fuller and darker (due to extra length and bore size), and, with the low Eb, they can do double duty for an A, thus saving that piddling $4k for another car! Finally, they were made as pro horns and uniformly well constructed.

So, why are they so little used and rarely made? The only company I'm aware of that still offers a standard production model is Amati, which wouldn't be my first choice, given the historical instruments available.... Buffet, Selmer, Leblanc, Malerne, Penzel Mueller, Kohlert, Conn, even Rampone all made Full Boehms at one time, most of them excellent instruments.

Its hard to find a customer who has seen one, a tech who has worked on one, a fingering chart for one, or even a replacement case! What do you folks see as the pros and cons of these horns and do you have any idea why they are no longer readily available? Just asking....

3 Comments

Brian

5/8/2018 02:19:11 pm

Thanks for the article. It's good to see some dialogue on the Full Boehms. You've summarized the virtues nicely.

I have a matched set of 1930 Selmer Full Boehms with one piece bodies that have served me well for almost 20 years including university symphony orchestra. To answer your question on why Full Boehm mechanisms have not caught on, the opinions/bias I've heard most often are:
- Aren't they stuffy with the extra note? (no)
- Isn't the extra mechanism harder to keep in adjustment? (not really much effort)
- Don't you have to learn new fingerings with the extra keys? (not if you don't want to)
- Do you accidentally hit the extra keys? (very rarely - but I can do that on plain Boehm too)

I think demand is low also because a lot of people aren't comfortable with vintage instruments, especially if not the brand they are most familiar with.

People who try my full boehm clarinets are not generally impressed, but I think that's more due to the fact that they play very differently than the modern R-13s those folks are used to. It's worth noting that those same people like my sound, they just didn't love the instruments feel in a five minute experiment playing the instruments themselves.

It is worth noting that Patricola offers Full Boehm clarinets (and "semi-full" without the low Eb). I haven't tried them, but a friend has an Eb clarinet from Patricola that played quite nicely.

Sadly I may abandon Full Boehm and Vintage for my Bb/A in a few years as the brand I'm intrigued by (Hanson) does not offer the full Boehm configuration and I'm trying really hard not to buy new wood instruments that aren't FSC certified.

I think demand would materialize quickly if Buffet or Backun fitted a full Boehm Mechanism to one of their models and expounded the benefits of it.

Thanks again for carrying the torch for all the underappreciated vintage clarinets.

Mauricio

6/13/2018 11:53:28 pm

According to my teacher, full clarinets need maintenance more often than other clarinets, going out of shape every couple months and that you need to find a good one if you are not willing to learn to maintain it yourself or to pay your tech often (every 6 months or so). Another issue is that the sound is neither a Bb or an A clarinet, and if you are paid the big bucks to play on an orchestra like he is, they want the specific sounds of said instruments. I have a full boehm Rampone that my grandma bought a long time ago and it's very nice although it's out of shape, I have been learning to fix saxes and clarinets since a few years and I might try to give life back to it

Jeff Rosner

6/16/2018 02:05:32 pm

To echo...they are very fiddly with all the synchronized bits, and rarely play as consistently as the unimproved partial Boehm, which only has one fiddly linkage at the middle joint.
Part of the problem is ordinary cork; I find that using tech cork makes for better regulation but is a little noisier. Natural cork compresses irreversibly over time, requiring adjustment also, the to y adjustment screws on these linkages are completely unsuitable. Compare them to the adjustments used on modern saxophones.

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Whatever happened to the Full Boehm?

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