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Re: Vandoren M14- the rarest of the rare

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-02-10 18:06

Radovan wrote:

> There is a little (but big) difference between M14 and M15. Of,
> course, M14 is out of stock, because Vandoren dont find any
> business (money) interest to produce such quality mouthpiece,
> compared with affordable price. M14 is better than many
> Vandoren mouthpieces.

There is a difference in the facings. M15 is a little more open and a little shorter-curved than M14 was. There's little doubt that the reason Vandoren stopped producing M14 was that it probably wasn't selling - it was fairly extreme among French-style mouthpieces. But there's not an issue of quality "compared with affordable price." M14 and the other Series 13 mouthpieces are made of the same material, probably in the same molds - the blank AFAIK is the same - and the divergence happens when the facing is applied. There was no difference in manufacturing quality, only in the final response and tone characteristics that depend on the facing differences.

I've been told by at least one well-respected mouthpiece craftsman and refacer that trying to close a tip opening while maintaining the rest of a mouthpiece's design is often a practical impossibility. The curve shape applied by hand may not be the same as the original M14, especially since the curve also has to be lengthened. To close the tip, you have to sand down the whole table. Once you do that, you bring the window closer to the baffle. So after the new facing is applied, the resulting shallower baffle may have to be corrected by hand and the rail thicknesses adjusted. If there's a concave curve designed into the table itself, you will have to try to reproduce it as well. By this time the chance is high that you've introduced something (or many things) into the structure that wasn't part of the original M14 design.

You may end up with a good mouthpiece or not - it isn't that you can't close the tip and lengthen the curve, but you won't necessarily have an M14 when you're done.

Karl

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