Klarinet Archive - Posting 000246.txt from 1995/03

From: "Chris J. Vaughn" <saxmastr@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Moutpiece Makers
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 22:27:52 -0500

On Wed, 8 Mar 1995, Fred Cicetti wrote:

> Chris Vaughn recently wrote that he gets a "darker" sound with a VanDoren
> crystal mouthpiece. I've heard just the opposite--that crystal
> mouthpieces give you a "brighter" sound.
>
> This dark vs. bright debate has been going on for a while. The
> terminology is, at best, confusing. For what it's worth, "darker" means
> "woodier" to me. And "brighter" means "more metallic".

Indeed and so do I. The crystal mouthpiece I referred to does indeed
give me that sort of sound--considerably darker than my old Vandoren B45
or even a Charles Bay (that broke when dropped :( ).

> I like a woody sound. Am blowing a Buffet R13, VanDoren B45DOT (Profile
> 88), Rovner ligature and VanDoren V12s (3 1/2s and 4s). Would I get a
> woodier sound with a VanDoren crystal or a Pete Fountain crystal? And, do
> these mouthpieces break as easily as I've been told?

I also use Vandoren V12's (3 1/2). I would suspect that a Pete Fountain
mouthpiece--which is obviously made for jazz purposes alone--would give
you a *much* brighter sound than the Vandoren--which is made for
classical playing. But you don't need to go into the realm of crystal to
find tremendous differences in bright/dark sound in mouthpieces. As to
whether they break or not--well I don't know what you've been told but I
certainly am more careful handling it than a normal plastic mouthpiece.
I've only heard of one person dropping their crystal mouthpiece--with
rather unfortunate results.

> I really like the sound I'm getting now, but, of course, the search never
> ends, does it?

No, it doesn't! :-)

p.s. I'm so happy because it turns out that my clarinet teacher has an
old Frank Kaspar mouthpiece laying around that he's going to let me
borrow! Hooray! ;-)

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"There is a fine line / Send me a giraffe, we need a /
between ignorance /-- giraffe around here. /--
and stupidity... /---- /----
Only I have managed ----/ Christopher J. Vaughn ----/
to erase that line." --/ Seattle Pacific University --/
--Dr. Science / saxmastr@-----.edu /
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The thing I really like about deadlines is that sound they make when they
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