Over the years I’ve had many ideas for how to improve clarinet acoustics, sound, various ideas related to repair and maintenance equipment, educational materials relating to equipment and playing mechanics, and much more. And while I'm proud of many of the products I've produced such as the Leblanc Concerto & Opus clarinets, the full line of Lyrique hard rubber clarinets, the ATG Reed Finishing System, and my book "The Educators Guide To The Clarinet" which remains the only complete pedagogy on the clarinet. Despite this many ideas have remained ideas as I often have not had the required support to make these projects happen.

Then in mid-April of this year Ted took a call from an aerospace engineer
who now owns and operates a precision machine shop...he also happens
to be a clarinet player. He had read my somewhat infamous article,
The Grenadilla Myth, and as an engineer was thrilled to see someone
discussing the clarinet in such an empirical manner. Ted took his
order for a Libertas II Bb and engaged him in a discussion about his work
both past and present. A few weeks after receiving the instrument,
Josh, the clarinetist and engineer, called us to see if I could fine tune a
few things on his clarinet. In the course of that discussion Josh and
I discovered that he had all the skills, and then some, to execute many of
the ideas I have for improving clarinets and related accessories. He described
this impulse as Engineer’s Disease; “I can make that…better”.  

The first project we decided to collaborate on was a high quality, precision made barrel. Josh’s professional world is a place of extreme repeatability and consistency, not unlike what we are looking for in certain aspects of the clarinet and music.  The first step was to create a clarinet barrel that was the equal of or superior to the industry standard for intonation, tone, articulation, etc. We also wanted it to be impervious to the environmental changes that plague wooden bodied instruments and barrels.  Doing this would, at minimum, raise the bar for player expectations by allowing clarinetists to know that when they ordered a replacement part they would get exactly what they ordered.  

The common practice of players testing numerous individual versions of the same product, brand and make, should not be needed.  When the sample barrels arrived they were everything that we had hoped for; the machine work was excellent and the consistency was exactly as we discussed.  Each barrel of a given length sounded and tuned just like every other one.  When a barrel or clarinet is made from wood this kind of consistency is simply not possible due to the nature of the wood itself. 

As we continued conversations about materials/manufacturing, barrels, and mouthpieces we also discussed ways to create a barrel which would darken and focus the sound as well as improving the resonance and projection of the instrument.  Part of this conversation led to the application of what antenna and electrical engineers will know as “band pass filters”.  That is to say, the geometry of the barrel acts to allow only certain sound frequencies through and anything outside that range is significantly attenuated.  The result of this filtering is that tonal color, shape and impedance (playing resistance) can be changed by changing the shape of the bore in the barrel.
 
While testing various ideas for this Josh wanted a way to implement design changes without making scores or even hundreds of individual barrels. It’s at this point that the idea of swapping precision made inserts in and out of the same barrel was born.  This idea allows players to choose inserts with different bore designs for different applications, even different pieces of music, on the same stage.  The difference in the tonal behaviors of the inserts give flexibility to the instrument that in the past would have required an entirely different mouthpiece/reed setup if not an entirely different clarinet.  This one barrel with the interchangeable BPF inserts is an easy to use, high value product for clarinetists across a broad spectrum of playing levels.  It essentially turns a single barrel body into 5, perhaps more in the future, distinct tonal identities by simply changing the insert which requires no tools. As the barrel body and bore inserts are entirely made from stable materials stability and repeatable performance is guaranteed.
 
When an idea is really “right” it is known by inventors that things come together very quickly and the solutions to hurdles seem to happen just as quickly.  This entire project is exactly the same way: the first discussions of barrels started in the first week of May and within a month the collaboration had borne out two distinct new products to improve the consistency and repeatability of the instrument.

This relationship has opened up countless new possibilities. The Lyrique Precision Barrels and Lyrique Precision Interchangeable Bore Barrels (patent pending) combine to make up two superb products and I believe they are the first of many innovations we'll now be able to offer the clarinet community in the coming years.