Klarinet Archive - Posting 000461.txt from 1996/01

From: Everett J Austin <BrendaA624@-----.COM>
Subj: Re: excellent Gregory Smith MP's
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 03:56:18 -0500

I tried three of Gregory Smith's mouthpieces recently and was quite impressed
at their quality. I bought one of them that I liked particularly after my
teacher listened ("blindfolded") to me play Weber's Concerto #1 on them and
came to the same conclusion I had. He commented that I seemed to carry out
his suggestions in dynamic shading in the slow movement easily and liked the
tone and legato quality. When he asked me where I had come upon them, I was
a bit suprised to learn that he was playing one himself already in the San
Francisco Symphony.

I had seen a note about them in this list from someone and when I saw Greg
Smiths posting about them a while back that they were old Henri Chedeville
replicas I was quite interested and decided to see if this was really so. I
have tried current Chedevilles, the Genussa and also the Vandoren M13 and
V13, but those are quite pallid student models compared to the Greg Smith
models, which are made of special rubber to the old Chedeville dimensions by
Zinner in Germany and hand faced by Mr Smith. The facings are dimensionally
rather close, but play the V-12 reeds he suggests in a very vibrant fashion,
without stuffiness or buzziness. To me they give a very ringing, resonant
tone (did Louis Cahuzac play a set up like this?), facile dynamics (with a
stable timbre and pitch from ppp to fff), good legato and articulation and
overall very even sound quality .

I found the A-442 mouthpieces to give a good tuning compromise, so that it is
possible to play up to pitch on a cold instrument and also higher than 440 if
needed (eg with strings).
I still like my Morgan mouthpieces, but find myself much less inclined to
play them now that I have gotten used to the Smith/Zinner mpc.
If any enthusiastic amateur like myself is interested in a really fine
mouthpiece, these are very much worth checking out and would add a lot of
pleasure to their playing. I suspect that many professionals may feel
similarly, if the old Chedeville style is to their liking.
I enjoyed doing business with Mr Smith and learned a lot in a couple of brief
conversations. I wish some time he would share with us his experiences in
the Chicago Symphony playing on both French and on German Wurlitzer (not
Schmidt-Reform) instruments and give a first-hand account of the important
differences between the two systems from the player's perspective.

For anyone interested, he can be reached through the WWW
(http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gregory_Smith_Clarinet/), e-mail
103356.1577@-----.

Best wishes,

Everett Austin
Fairfax, California