Uebel Advantage Bb/A Clarinet

Friedrich Arthur Uebel founded his workshop in Markneukirchen, Germany on September 2, 1936, taking over the customer base of Oskar Oehler, who died that same year. Oehler was the "old master" of German clarinet making — the Oehler fingering system is named after him.

One year after founding, Uebel won the "diplôme d'honneur" at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris. The company was considered the most important German clarinet workshop through the mid-20th century, despite surviving the Third Reich, World War II, and East German socialism.

The modern F. Arthur Uebel GmbH was founded in 2010 in Wiesbaden, with production returning to Markneukirchen. Jochen Seggelke (yes, the same one) has been advising the company on acoustic and technical questions since 2014.

The Advantage is Uebel's entry-level professional instrument, using what they call a "semi-German bore" — polycylindrical like French clarinets, but less so. German-system clarinets traditionally have more cylindrical bores, producing darker tone with fewer overtones. Uebel is splitting the difference — though as you'll see below, this particular horn came out bright anyway.

How it plays

Pretty bright, with more "sheen" on the top-end than nearly anything in our catalog. If you want a horn that cuts, this cuts. Articulation is quick, and the open feel gives you a wide dynamic range to work with.

The trade is the tuning, and you should know it going in: the low register runs flat, the clarion runs sharp, and the twelfths between them spread wide. Part of that is my setup: I test every clarinet on the same mouthpiece (a Vandoren BD6) so you can compare apples to apples on the dashboard. But the BD6 is a really open mouthpiece on a really open horn, which makes pitch harder to manage than it needs to be. A more closed mouthpiece (Vandoren BD5 or M30, Backun Shifrin) will rein in a good chunk of this. The dashboard below maps where the work is; just remember that the dashboard data was recorded with a pretty wide-open mouthpiece.

Resistance: 5/10, Medium

Pretty open for a German-lineage horn — it feels similar to an R13. Hear how it responds to volume in the audio player below — Weber first (wide dynamics, wide color), then the Berlioz (wide dynamics, narrow color), then the Gershwin (narrow on both).

Before you decide

Two horns in this bracket are the obvious cross-shops.

The Royal Classical Limited is the other side of the coin — noticeably darker, a notch more resistant, and it beats the Advantage on tuning across the board: better scale, better twelfths. The Advantage answers with the French "ping", the wider color range, and the more open feel. The Yamaha 650II articulates quicker and its twelfths behave better, but its scale wanders even more than the Advantage's — it just wanders in one direction (flat), which some players find easier to live with.

Play or listen to both against the Advantage in the audio player and pull up the dashboards. Buy the Advantage if that bright, French sound is what you're after; if inherent intonation is more important, check out the Classical Limited before you decide.