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Re: Tuning 3rd mode?

Author: Caroline Smale
Date: 2015-05-31 03:23

As far as B&H big bore (1010) instruments are concerned they will only tune correctly with the properly sized mouthpiece bore, which in their case is 15.25mm the same size as the main instrument bore, and has to be essentially parallel throughout about 95% of it's length.
Modern mouthpieces can be used but only if they are reamed to the correct bore.

This reaming increases the total volume of mouthpiece and so lowers the overall pitch, which can be corrected either by using a shorter barrel or by shortening the actual mouthpiece by approx 2 mm.
The original B&H 1010 mouthpieces are typical about 2mm shorter than most other French style mouthpieces.

The mouthpiece bore shapes, tapers, diameters of older style (e.g. 20s,30s, 40s) mouthpieces are often significantly different from those in current production so you could experiment with some of those if available to assess the effect on the altissimo.

Since altissimo uses the highest partials and hence shorter wavelengths then the effect of bore changes at the very top of the bore (in the barrel and in the mouthpiece) should have a disproportional effect on the altissimo region.

You may want to talk with a mouthpiece maker on their experience in choosing bore sizes and tapers.

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