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German Mouthpiece on Boehm Clarinet and Legere Reeds

Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2016-04-03 04:29

This combination works.

Firstly I owe an apology to earlier posters for whom I had nothing but skepticism. My first thought is that you are looking at an acoustical mismatch of equipment and are only asking for trouble. Well actually that is partly true, but what you have is a different set of compromises that can be overcome (not really any different than what we go through with Boehm mouthpieces on Boehm clarinets).

I also want to thank those folks that helped me along this path of discovery. Mostly I owe a debt of gratitude to Bas de Jong of Viotto mouthpieces for guiding my path of reed strength to use with the "standard German facing." I also must thank another poster, "Brietling 123456789" for asking a question about Viotto facings that led to my correspondence with Bas de Jong.

The key to getting a standard German mouthpiece to working is to use a very soft reed strength. The usually pairing of reed strength is 2 1/2. This is key to what the German approach and sound is all about. As Bas states, with this combination all one has to do is "blow." There is very little finagling at all with one's embouchure to achieve a really lovely classical sound on a clarinet.

The other key element to using the German mouthpiece is that you can get a wonderful sound using Legere German cut reeds. I have heretofore been very disappointed with Legere results on Boehm mouthpieces, but I think the key here is that one needs a very light approach to playing to get the best out of them. With the German mouthpiece approach this is just what you get.

So after living with various mouthpieces over the last five months I have gotten the best results with Wurlitzer M3+ facing mouthpieces and #3 Nick/Legere German cut reeds. I did need to bump up the strength with the Legeres to get the best results across the entire dynamic spectrum.

I am able to achieve a sound that is solid, and can carry through larger ensembles with this combination. I would say there are still better results with cane (Vandoren White Master 2 1/2) but the Legere offers far better consistency from playing session to playing session and a much more affordable option over time.

There are issues that need to be addressed with the Wurlitzer. For starters, the tenon is 1mm larger in diameter and 1mm longer than what we are used to. To get this to work I would imagine that a tech could reduce the last 1mm (length and diameter) to get this to work in a standard Boehm barrel. What I did was to ask Dr. Allan Segel to make a custom barrel to the larger deeper and wider dimensions.

Pitch is lower with the Wurlitzer so I would recommend using a barrel 2mm shorter than you would normally (if you use a 66mm, then a 64 should be a good starting point).

The other outstanding issue is the ligature. The diameter of the German mouthpiece body is smaller, and requires a specifically smaller ligature for this purpose. "Thomann" offers the Vandoren Optima in the German sized version as well as an odd little ligature by GF that has a screw/plate configuration that you can apply directly to the reed or flip to use in a similar fashion to the Silverstein. Or you can just tie on the reed with string as the old timers would do.

There are specific reasons why I think this whole idea is worth considering:

o Those with muscle dystonia in their lips
o Players who are getting older and cannot put as much effort as they used to
o Trying to sound more German (though only to a degree)

There certainly is a lot to say on the subject but I wanted to get the core of the idea out there.

.....................Paul Aviles

Post Edited (2016-04-03 05:05)

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