 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Ted Donaldson
Date: 2001-08-31 01:27
Is it hard to do? i am currently getting a C* refaced my Mr. Grabner, but i was wondering... Could you do it with a widdle, or would you have to get a high speed sander or somthing... I just thought it would be fun to start a mouthpiece refacing business.
Oh well...
Ted
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Author: Wes
Date: 2001-08-31 02:58
Hi!
Mouthpiece refacing has never been a very lucrative business in my opinion. I've done quite a bit of it but I'm not prepared to cope with the business aspects. For me, there is not enough money to be made considering the customer requirements and the coordination with them. I learned a lot about it from a legendary refacer but I only do it for free for friends or myself.
There are reference documents such as the Brand book and there is the Morgan kit for the work. I don't measure any more than I have to, doing a lot of it with minimal tools by eyeball and, eventually, testing the playing. Absolutely no power tools are needed by me although I believe the majority of facings of new mouthpieces are done with pattern following electric grinders.
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Author: beejay
Date: 2001-08-31 07:46
Well, I have a B45 that seems to have been chewed up by a dog after lending out an old clarinet. I thought I'd have to throw the thing away, but I plugged the chips -- including a big gouge on one of the rails -- with epoxy paste. I carefully sanded the infill by eye with the finest paper I could find, and then polished. The result is that the MP plays better now than it ever did before. But this was pure luck.
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Author: David Spiegelthal
Date: 2001-08-31 12:53
Ted,
I think you're getting in a bit over your head. Buy a few dozen used mouthpieces and fool around with them for a few years until you can consistently and fairly quickly reface them into really good mouthpieces. Then, and only then, start thinking about doing it for money. Please!
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Author: Anji
Date: 2001-08-31 13:58
Get in line.
I spoke with Wolf Tanenbaum of Bari Associates last year and then had a chat with Everett Matson on the same topics.
Those of us lucky enough to successfully reface our first mouthpiece are often hard-pressed to recreate the event.
There is no hard-and-fast methodology so reproducible methods are devised by each artisan. (It ain't easy to do it well, EVERY time.)
Bottom line, there are only how many people playin' the licorice stick?
How many are actually interested in buying custom (ie- Megabuck) items?
Clarinet players are notoriously evasive about what they want in a mouthpiece, so the widdle turns into a lottle returns and adjustments... there goes your margin.
Do it for yourself until you're consistent. Clark Fobes figured 200 iterations,
Everett figured 100 or so, Wolfie said to turn back before it was too late.
(It's too late.)
I have just successfully refaced my 4th decent player. This is the 20-somethingth
version, which has taken most of a full year.
A piece of plate glass, lots sandpaper, the Morgan measuring kit and a few dozen blanks of the same style and a year... get these and check back with us.
Wanna make money? Sell reeds cheap.
anji
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Author: Daniel
Date: 2001-08-31 14:32
>Bottom line, there are only how many people playin' the licorice stick?
>How many are actually interested in buying custom (ie- Megabuck) items?
Actually. Not all custom mouthpieces cost "Megabucks". Dan Johnston, another legendary mouthpiece maker, sold his mouthpieces at ClarinetFest for $70. He sat with you on a one-on-one basis and gave you a number of mouthpieces to try, and if you found one you liked, but it didn't feel quite right, he'd work on the facing slightly and let you try it again, and so on until you were happy with it. It wasn't like the other booths with 80-100 mouthpieces sitting on pegs, and Mr. So-and-So either not there or just trying to sell you his product and as many as 5 or so people all sitting around playing mouthpieces at varying degrees of honkiness, sweetness or technique. Charging $150 on up.
While my partner was sitting with him picking out a mouthpiece, a teacher came up saying he wanted to buy a mouthpiece for his student, and Mr. Johnston plainly told him, "That won't work. It will be made for your mouth and not his. If you want to bring him over and he can try the mouthpieces, that's fine. That's why it says *Custom* mouthpieces." (or something very close to that, anyway)
There was a bit of a line while my partner and i were waiting for Kjell-Inge Stevensson to finish up. But most people didn't seem patient enough to wait.
Greg and Clark are both nice guys, and DO make nice mouthpieces, as are/do all the other mouthpiece makers. But why charge $150+ for work on a $35-$40 Zinner blank?
Daniel
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Author: mw
Date: 2001-08-31 15:25
Why ? Because they are the BEST, IMO. However, the purveyors you mentioned aren't alone. The MARKET ultimately sets price. There have been numerous discussions (& battles) on this subject. Check the Klarinet Archives. There is a good one between Roger Garrett & Clark Fobes a while back.
As I stated, the point remains ... what will the market bear? If it bears $175+ (none of these guys sells for $150) ... then so be it.
The consumer ALWAYS has a choice ... money is opportunity cost ... spend it or don't. That's capitalism.
best,
mw
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2001-08-31 19:18
An interesting discussion. On occassion I LIGHTLY clean up a mp facing as Anji suggests, and haven't ruined many in the process. Be careful. Don
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Author: mw
Date: 2001-08-31 19:31
Me, three. Gotta be VERy careful, though. Angles change quickly. mw
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Author: Ted Donaldson
Date: 2001-08-31 21:45
A piece of plate glass, lots sandpaper, the Morgan measuring kit and a few dozen blanks of the same style and a year... get these and check back with us.
Where can i purchase these things? (the plate glass, morgan measuring kit, and the blanks.) i know where to get the sand paper...
Thanks again...
ted
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Author: Jack Kissinger
Date: 2001-08-31 23:17
You can get the glass the same place you get the sandpaper. You can find blanks at the mail order stores like WW&BW or
http://www.jjbabbitt.com/
but it would probably be cheaper to look on eBay for someone who has a bunch of no-name mouthpieces to dump. (Try to make sure you're getting hard rubber, however.) As I recall, when Roger Garrett started up, he took a sabbatical from his college teaching position and interviewed/studied with some established makers. Then, when he was ready to start practicing, he sent a message to the Klarinet list asking for members to send him old mouthpieces they weren't using with the offer that he would reface them and return them.
You can find the Morgan measuring kit at WW&BW but it's pricey (about $150 on the 2000 price list). Before you shell out your hard earned money, you might consider this "beginner's" kit, from a post to the Klarinet list by Clark Fobes. He suggests
"One can also contact J.J. Babbitt co (219) 293-6514 for these tools:
1.Curved tip gauge (graduated in mm/100) about $75 when I bought
mine.
2.Glass gauge (graduated in half mm) about $15
You will also need a set of feeler guages. The standard gauges are:
.034
.024
.010
.0015
I use 16 gauges to measure the curve, but this is over kill for
anyone just interested in basics. One can buy a set of feeler gauges at any
good auto parts store for about $6."
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2001-09-05 07:32
I would recommend not to start reface practice by your favorite mouthpiece. Most provably you will ruin it. My suggestion is to buy a Zninner blank(s) from International Musical Suppliers. I remember they sell one for $35.
Outer surface facing seems easy but inner surface facing will need much more knowledge and necessitate making your own special tooling as once Greg Smith wrote on this BBS. Since even Greg Smith had as a starting or reference point his own old Kasper and Chedeville, I do not think I can originate my own shape.
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Author: Gregory Smith
Date: 2001-09-05 16:26
Daniel,
In response specifically to your post, one is paying for the cost and quality of the blank, agreed - but by far, most importantly one is paying for the quality of, expertise in, and demand of work done with the blank.
And quality is many different things to many different people.
Dan and I make nowhere NEAR the same STYLE mouthpiece (having nothing to do with the subjective analysis of quality).
I hope that this explanation clarifies a general and popularly held misnomer.
Gregory Smith
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Author: David dow Sympony NB
Date: 2002-04-26 10:31
There is an ominous story of jazz great John Coltrane who resurfaced in a 2cd career in CD stores. In the early 60s after his famous Giant Steps session on Atlantic Records, that he dropped is best mouthpiece and dented the metal rails. It I guess was an Otto Link or Selmer metal. Story goes is that it was re done and much to his unhappiness he found it totally different and ruined...so this work should only be done by highly qualified people and then it doesn't guarantee that it will play as well as it did before or even like the way it played originally. (Trane was also experiencing health problems so this contributed alot of stress.)
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