Review of Karl Ahrens' Mountain Ocarinas
An Unbreakable Ocarina with Impressive Volume
While designing his Mountain Ocarinas, Karl Ahrens experimented with quite a few materials before settling on four that offered good durability, tone, and appearance.
Traditionally, ocarinas have been fashioned from clay, and even today ceramic ocarinas are in the majority. “Clay is a great medium,” Karl comments. “You can mold it quickly, and it’s relatively cheap. It’s a lot easier than prototyping in the materials I use.”
A Durable and Resonant Ocarina
Karl wanted durable materials that were unsusceptible to water damage. He is able to guarantee every ocarina he makes for life. “That, to me, is part of the magic of the instrument,” he remarks. “You can take it anywhere and play it anytime, instead an instrument that you have to keep in a case.”
Karl was also passionate about resonant materials, but surprisingly, this turned out to be less crucial than he guessed. “One thing I discovered through prototyping with all sorts of materials," he comments, “is that after a certain threshold of hardness, the actual material itself is less important than the quality of the design and the precision with which you can adhere to that design."
"I have to say, this is not true of every instrument. For instance, Sitka spruce or similar woods often work best for an acoustic guitar’s soundboard because there’s actual sympathetic resonation in the body as a string is plucked. And the extra thin walls of some expensive silver flutes contribute to the overall tone because there is some degree of sympathetic vibration in those walls. But the truth is, with ocarinas and most flutes, quality design and craftsmanship are more important than the material. If the material is of sufficient hardness, density, and rigidity, what’s vibrating or oscillating is the air, not the instrument itself.”
Higher-Level Mountain Ocarinas
Eventually, Karl settled on three materials for his hand crafted ocarinas. Dymondwood, Warmstone, and Hardcoat resin-lined aluminum were all extremely durable, produced excellent tone, and were well received because of their striking appearance.
Karl and his expert craftsmen perform over forty-five painstaking steps to complete each Dymondwood ocarina. “It is a real combination of precise roughing out with sophisticated machinery and a tremendous amount of handwork,” he states. “The interior dimensions of each ocarina are essentially identical. But on the outside, each of our high end instruments is a bit unique.”
Dymondwood, is a special type of hardwood stabilized with phenolic resins. It’s expensive and hard to work but can be crafted with tremendous precision. Dymondwood is far less affected by temperature and moisture changes than non-resin hardwoods.
“Warmstone is a term we created,” Karl remarks. “The material is one third acrylic and two thirds mineral content. It’s harder and much more stable than acrylic. You can machine it with incredible precision. It’s not affected adversely by moisture at all and it has wonderful resonance. Actually, of all the materials, it’s my favorite because it’s so dimensionally stable, it glues wonderfully, and it’s just flat gorgeous.”
Karl’s Warmstone ocarinas have the glossy appearance of polished marble or granite. And, if this highly durable material does become scratched or scuffed, its original finish can be renewed with a piece of cloth and some buffing compound.
Karl has the blanks for his aluminum ocarinas machined from aircraft grade metal. After finishing the aluminum ocarinas, Karl has them hard-coat anodized. “Aluminum-oxide is a surface that grows right out of the aluminum itself, but it is inert and is actually much harder than the aluminum,” Karl explains. These ocarinas have a solid, hefty feel and the appearance of gold or brushed brass.
Polycarbonate Ocarinas
Finally, Karl undertook the extremely expensive and time consuming challenge of creating precise, hardened-steel molds to produce polycarbonate ocarinas. “I dreamed of making molds for quite a while before we were ever able to afford it,” he recalls. “I wanted to make really nice ocarinas that people could easily afford.”
Because material is less important than design quality and precision, Karl’s polycarbonate ocarinas are able to produce excellent tone. “If I machine a solid piece of plastic and craft an ocarina,” Karl states, “and then do the same with a very fancy hardwood to exactly the same dimensions, you’d be hard pressed to tell them apart. With the greater density of our higher-end ocarinas, and the extra handwork involved, there is a very subtle improvement in sound. The lower notes are slightly more resonant, and the highest notes are slightly more focused. The difference, though, is really quite subtle.”
A lot more work is involved in making a polycarbonate Mountain Ocarina than might be guessed. “In order to get good resonance, we do all the gluing by hand, and we hand sand the windways,” Karl remarks. “They’re not the mass produced item that people think.”
The majority of Karl’s customers opt for these $25 polycarbonate instruments. “We steer beginners that way,” he says. “Our polycarbonate ocarinas are quality instruments and a way to get into this without spending a ton of money. A lot of people fall in love with them and wind up returning for one of our high end ocarinas, but, to get started, the polycarbonate ocarinas are a great value and just about bulletproof.”
Strictly speaking, all of Karl’s ocarinas are surprising values. The hardwood is the most expensive at about $120, while the Warmstone and aluminum are both under $100.
Karl’s instruments are offered in the keys of C and G. They have intuitive fingering that even children can master quickly. “The range of our present models,” Karl states, “is an octave plus three notes, with all the sharps and flats.”
Not only are Mountain Ocarinas comfortable around the neck, but they are a great look for musicians making a statement. Musicians can find his products at www.mountainsocarina.com.
Readers may also be interested to check out a history and an introduction to this musical instrument as well as a profile of Karl Ahrens and his quest for an ideal ocarina.
Aluminum Ocarina from Mountain Ocarinas
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Warmstone Ocarina from Mountain Ocarinas
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Polycarbonate Ocarina from Mountain Ocarinas
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Hardwood Ocarina from Mountain Ocarinas
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