Klarinet Archive - Posting 000786.txt from 2001/01

From: "Don Yungkurth" <clarinet@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Re: scary turn of discussion: Mouthpieces
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 02:24:28 -0500

Terry Sterkel wrote:

<I have been following this discussion, and it has gone in a
<scary direction.

<As a very experienced engineer, I am painfully
<aware of lot sample variances. I expect then, and through a
<number of explicit (sample and reject) and implicit (Taguchi)
<techniques attempt to mitigate the AFFECT of the variations
<from one application to another.

(Cut)

<I find this position hard to take. This means that VanDoren, Selmer,
<Woodwind, in fact anyone who makes more than one mouthpiece a month
<is noticeably inconsistent musically within any mouthpiece model.

<Is this *really* what the veterans are telling us?

I'm not a "veteran" with any knowledge about mouthpieces as a professional
clarinetist or mouthpiece maker, but rather a retired engineer and amateur
musician.

When taking lessons after retiring from my "day job", my teacher quickly
realized that my mouthpiece was essentially "junk". He didn't say so, but
gave me three mouthpieces to try and asked me to report back at the next
lesson. I couldn't play on any of them with my reeds and spent the week
adjusting reeds to these mouthpieces. I found that any one of them was a
great improvement on my mouthpiece and particularly liked a Vandoren B45.

I went to a local music store and compared my teacher's B45 with two the
store had in stock. While neither of them matched exactly the response of
my teacher's "prototype", they were quite similar and clearly an improvement
on what I had been playing, so I bought one.

After playing on the new one for a few weeks I was so pleased that I decided
to buy a second B45 as a backup. I went back to the same store and they had
three B45s to try. None of them were remotely like the one I had purchased
or like my teacher's. Simple looking at the table of each mouthpiece, I
could see that they didn't even *look* the same - no measurements were
needed!

>From my view, yes, the veterans and the amateurs are telling you that,
"anyone who makes more than one mouthpiece a month is noticeably
inconsistent musically within any mouthpiece model". I should add that I
have little, almost no, experience with hand finished mouthpieces. You
probably shouldn't assume that they are as non-uniform as the commercial
models, but they aren't likely to be absolutely identical.

Don Yungkurth (clarinet@-----.net)

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org

   
     Copyright © Woodwind.Org, Inc. All Rights Reserved    Privacy Policy    Contact charette@woodwind.org