| Required materials: Clarinet
How do I go about obtaining a clarinet?
Here are some thoughts about renting, borrowing, and buying used and new instruments.
I’m going to buy a new instrument, what do you recommend?
Firstly, there are many great beginner instruments out there and I’m open to most of them except for the very bottom tier. Do not buy instruments from stores that don’t in any way specialize in music retail. Do not buy Indiana and First Act guitars. Don’t buy guitars from Wal-mart. Don’t buy guitars from Target. Piano and clarinet students have less to worry about because they don’t sell $100 clarinets and pianos like they do guitars.
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For clarinet, I recommend the Yamaha student model YCL-250 which prices around $800. There are much cheaper student models but I am not comfortable with their quality or their reliability. The YCL-250 is a plastic clarinet but the craftsmanship of the actual mechanisms and pads are some of the best I’ve seen on any clarinet.
Note, on any clarinet, the mouthpiece and ESPECIALLY the ligature that come with the instrument are usually sub par. Consider picking up a Rovner 1R ligature for $20 – getting a better mouthpiece isn’t as immediate a need and is a more involved process since mouthpieces have to be tested while this relatively cheap ligature will almost definitely outperform any ligature that comes standard with an instrument.
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