Clarinet ligature audiotardery?

fretmeister

I'm buying my daughter a clarinet. I've found a very good condition used Yamaha one that her teacher has seen - owned by another of his students. The only think it seems to need is a new ligature. They can be a variety of metals, leather, cloth, even rubber.

There seems to be an awful lot of bollocks about whether a ligature can affect the way the instrument sounds depending on how it clamps the reed to the mouthpiece table. 

Looking at the mouth piece carefully I could see that a ligature might influence the reed vibration if the ligature was too high. But when it's lower it seems to just clamp the flat non-vibrating part of the reed to the mouthpiece, and I can't see how it would affect anything at that point.

And I'm not convinced that a modest price clarinet would get any contact benefit in a manner claimed by the "Fat Finger" headstock clamp idea.

Any clarinet players on here that can help?

Do they make a difference?

CabbageCat

Grade 8 clarinettist but only ever used a metal ligature so can't comment really.

I guess a leather ligature could affect the vibration since it will hold the reed more gently and could therefore allow more of the reed to vibrate. I bet it doesn't make much difference though.

Bron_Yr_Aur

They do actually make a difference. How much depends will what level she is partially, but it's certainly much more genuine than the old 'fat finger' clamp nonsense.

They let both the reed and the mouthpiece resonate more freely, but the main improvement she will notice is the ease of just having one screw on the opposite side to the reed for ease of use.

I think the basic Rovner ones are only about 20quid anyway, so not an awful lot more than a metal jobby...