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« on: December 10, 2016, 03:18:11 PM »
I got my Linton alto back from the shop a few weeks ago, and I've had it at rehearsal and practiced at home a bit. It's a nice clarinet, but could use some thin thin nylon or PFTE washers in a couple of spots to take the side-to-side wriggle and clankiness out of the spoon keys. I can play it in-tune with the ensemble OK. I did noticed that the socket in its neck was smaller than the LeBlanc's neck socket, as inserting my favored J.B. Hite mouthpiece was proving to be difficult - tenon was ok, but the cork was too thick. I swapped to the Noblet MP that had come with the LeBlanc and that worked OK in the Linton.
I had noticed some squeakiness and was wondering if I had been too aggressive with flattening my (current) reeds or if the reeds I was using were too soft for the instrument, so I worked on a pair of 2.5 reeds and used one of them during rehearsal on my LeBlanc alto Thursday night. Other than "new harder reed cheeks" (ow), I declared the reed "good".
Scanning for a bargain last month, I picked up another Noblet alto clarinet mouthpiece on that auction site. Trying it tonight (after it had a day to acclimate to being inside), I noticed that its tenon was simply too large to fit into the socket without a fight. Odd. Obviously, I need to break out the micrometer. I suspect it will fit into the LeBlanc's neck just fine. What someone was doing with a mouthpiece (no cap or ligature!) and no clarinet, I know not.
So, I broke out the Linton alto again tonight and decided to run through "Nightmare" (the alto has its own part and brings some nice dissonance to the piece) with the new reed. It worked fine, but I noticed the squeak again - however, not needing to keep up with the ensemble, I noticed that I thought that I felt my fingers mis-hitting the keys, which would definitely cause a squeak. Here's a photo of the bottom of the upper joint of the Linton (top) and the LeBlanc (resting in its case). Note the difference in where the touches are and the apparent size of the pads under them. The inside diameters (per sticking my thumb in) appear to be approximately the same. The upper joint of the Linton is already longer because of its shorter neck.
I think I need to break out a measuring tape and a micrometer. I don't want to take it apart, so you're not going to get tone-hole measurements at this time, sorry.