Author: Tom Puwalski
Date: 2006-03-01 12:46
When it's all said and done, for me, the criteria for changing a part of my gig rig is: Does it sound better, or sound the same and play with less effort? In this case I lucked out and it does both.
This is what I've deduce from looking at it and playing on it since Saturday:
A. I'm not sure about the origin, or composition of the material, but I would tend to think of it as "space age" as opposed to "vintage". I do know my top lip doesn't slide around on the top of it. Because the tuning was improved while playing it, I suspect that the internal dimensions are correct for modern production clarinets. 60 year old mouthpieces where designed for 60 year old clarinets, bores were different, reeds were different everything was different back in the day. The famed Moenig barrel was a solution to the older big bore mouthpieces that were going onto smaller bore clarinets, think of that white plastic PVC piece for going from 1/2 inch to 3/8 inch pipe and it makes sense.
B. when trying it I used new reeds, on my old mouthpiece with the ATG, it usually took 10 strokes down the right side of a Vandoren V12, 3.5 to get it close to gig balanced. The 5 reeds I balanced this week only to 3-4 stokes. While 5 reeds isn't enough for me to make a complete judgement, I do think for me it indicates even less time spend with reeds. Yea, even more practice time!!!!
C. I played 4 of the same facing mouthpieces, 4Cs, and 4Ls, the same facings played identically. No need to "grub for truffles" trying 30 mouthpieces to find one that will play. For me, that means If I'm out of town on a gig and my primary mouthpiece gets lost stolen or dropped, I can grab my spare it will play the same, and have one fed exd, so I have a spare the next day. That is piece of mind! No more what am I going to do if I lose my "precious"
d. those three lines on the bottom of the mouthpiece. Those three lines are, 0001 or 00001(I'm bad at the math thing) of an inch higher than the rest of the table. What this seems to do is recreate that "dip" in the table a lot of us used to like, in a more controllable fashion. I don't know if this is what makes it respond quickly or not, I'd have to play it against one that doesn't have that feature, which might make for an interesting experiment. I'm sure the production tolerances are such that could change that feature and leave everything else the same.
e. Facings, ok here is a disclaimer: The following is Puwalski theory, this is purely the thoughts and feelings of Tom Puwalski and as such must be treated as Opinion. While not as scary as "From the mind of Ashton Kutcher", trying or thinking to hard about what follows could be harm full, physically, mentally, or philosophically. There are 2 styles of playing on a single reed mouthpiece, those that put a lot of air into a clarinet or sax and those that put a very little amount but use a lot of "air pressure". People that use a large volume air tend to like larger tip opening, those who use more air pressure tend to like closer facings. I fall into the later category. I like close mouthpieces, but I've never liked anything less than 1.00 but the C doesn't play like a typical close mouthpiece. I also tried the "Philadelphia" a much more opened tip and my reed almost worked on it, I got a pretty big sound on it, but I would have had to adjust a reed and get used to the difference in playing it, I suspect that my learning curve would not be that long.
I can't wait to get one on my Bass, that will totally rock!
Tom Puwalski, former soloist with the US Army Field Band, Clarinetist with Lox&Vodka, and Author of "The Clarinetist's Guide to Klezmer"and most recently by the order of the wizard of Oz, for supreme intelligence, a Masters in Clarinet performance
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The Clarinet BBoard
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