Robert Carrée designed the R13's polycylindrical bore around 1950; the model name appeared in 1955. The "R" series naming scheme wasn't actually coined by Buffet in France — it came from their U.S. distributor, who also named an R14, R15, and R16. None of those stuck. For whatever reason, Buffet kept "R13," and here we are.

Before polycylindrical bores, clarinets were a tuning nightmare. Carrée's breakthrough — varying the bore diameter along the instrument's length — addressed overtone alignment issues that had plagued clarinets for a century. Nearly every professional clarinet made between 1955 and the 1990s borrowed from this design.

Even today, the R13 remains the single best-selling professional clarinet in history. It's the clarinet everyone knows. It's the benchmark. Buffet made some further refinements in the 1970s, and since then they've pretty much left it alone — preferring to put their R&D into newer models like the Tradition and Légende. The R13 is frozen in time, which is both its appeal and (depending on who you talk to) its limitation.

What are the limitations? Go into the R13 Dashboard below and you'll see. The low register runs flat. The throat tones run really flat. The 12ths stretch. The intonation spread is wider than most modern designs. That said, it's still the benchmark for its sound and response — quintessentially French: articulation is crisp, tone is bright and even across registers. My view: the R13 is a 1970s design playing in a 2020s market. Competitors (and, indeed Buffet themselves) have spent decades refining what Carrée started.

If you're upgrading from a student horn and the R13 is the only professional clarinet you've heard of, you're in the right place — but do yourself a favor and play a few alternatives before you decide. That's what we're here for!

Resistance: 5/10, Medium

The R13 is, unsurprisingly, middle-of-the-road. It is the epitome of "French" clarinets in my opinion, with a tight core, medium resistance, and good response.

In general, added resistance in a clarinet design usually keeps the louder dynamic ranges from spreading; the clarinet "holds its core" and focus, but will provide a smaller dynamic range (on both ends, loud and soft) and smaller color palette. A less resistant clarinet typically provides a much wider tonal palette to choose from, but will require more control from the player to control pitch and sound consistency.

When listening for how a clarinet responds to added air pressure and embouchure control, listen to the Weber example (wide dynamic range and color range), then the Berlioz excerpt (wide dynamic range, but narrow color range), and finally the Gershwin excerpt (narrow dynamic range and narrow color range). You will hear how these clarinets respond — for better or worse! — to my input as a clarinet player.