Re: PHOENIX clarinet pass around - a review by JonF
Academy Instruments Phoenix Clarinet
First impressions
Comes in a nice modern case, complete with backpack straps. Nicely packaged. Had some cork grease, pull through cleaner, white gloves (yeah, great!) and a nice touch, a screwdriver. Clarinet itself has two barrels and a pretty basic looking mouthpiece, a starter reed and a really quite smart lig and a metal mouthpiece cap.
Had a good look over the thing. Build quality looks to be good. The finish of the metal ring around the bell was particularly nice. Has an adjustable thumb rest. Corks pretty neat, toneholes look very well cut. The body is a quite attractive matte finish. When assembled, it felt quite nice in the hands. Running my fingers over the keys, there was a nice uniform popping and the keys closed in turn. No hint of sticky pads.
Just out of interest I weighed it. It was only 12g lighter than my wooden Boosey and Hawkes Emperor.
Playing
I didn’t try playing it with the supplied mouthpiece, as mouthpieces are a very personal thing. I used my Redwine Jazz mouthpiece, and also a Graftonite C7. It played really, really well, particularly for such an inexpensive clarinet. I was able to rattle up and down the scale very easily, from a smooth and sonorous low up to a pretty clear and full top end. In the past, cheapo clarinets have sounded shrieky up top, but not this one. Another difficult area on a clari is the ‘throat’ notes just before the break – G#, A and Bb. This one acquitted itself very well. When I swapped the Redwine for the Graftonite I was able to power quite a lot of volume through the clarinet. Intonation through the range was bang on.
I compared it to my Emperor. I guess I preferred the tone of the wooden clari, it sounded a bit more, well, woody. The keywork also felt a bit more spacious for my big hands, an advantage for me, but probably not for the younger player who’d be likely to play the Phoenix. So, I’ve got a clarinet I prefer to the Phoenix, but it’s a much more expensive model, and I’ve grown very used to it over the last thirty odd years. I’d say that the Phoenix would compare very favourably to big-name student clarinets costing over twice as much.
Conclusions
When I was playing this clarinet I kept having to remind myself that it is on sale for £139. Oh, and for forum members there’s a 10% discount. So for £125 you can get a great clarinet. Amazing.
I made a comment about this clarinet being used by younger players, but why the hell should it? If you’re a sax player and want a decent clari for occasional doubling this would be perfect, particularly since it comes with a three year warranty.
I’ve just written what could only be regarded as a pretty glowing report of this clarinet. That’s because I was impressed, if anything, relative to its competitor products, more so than the Jericho alto sax I reviewed a while ago. I’d like to emphasise that I have no connection to or interest in Academy Wind Instruments.
