Bass Clarinets

THE BEGINNING
The first bass clarinets were developed as early as 1800. A wind instrument of that size requires a perfect key system. Alternatively you can bend the corpus several times so the tone holes get closer to each other in order to cover them all with your fingers. Not having perfect keys, early instrument builders chose that way, so that the first bass clarinets did look more like a snake rather than an ordinary clarinet.

- wood wind

SOURCE : http://www.the-clarinets.net/english/bass-clarinet.html