The Clarinet BBoard

The Clarinet BBoard The C4 standard

New Topic | Go to Top | Go to Topic | Search | Help/Rules | Smileys/Notes | Log In

Previous Message | Next Message

Re: Mouthpiece for V12 5 reeds?

Author: Geronimo
Date: 2016-04-06 18:21

Samoma1,

I have some experience playing on 5's regularly so I'll throw my 2¢ in.

I was encouraged to try out the vandoren M15 mouthpiece and when I switched I was extremely unsatisfied. However the recomemdation was from a trusted teacher and we both understood that it will be a "transitional" mouthpiece. After thinking about why I don't like the sound and trying various brands/cut of reeds at the same strength (3.5) a colleague suggested that I tried a stronger reed. Purely through expirementation I setteled on the vandoren traditional #5 (I understand you specifically are asking about the V12 but I personally didn't care for it at the time of trying things). At that point my mouthpiece no longer sounded like a kazoo but I'm still not very happy with it.
What I'm trying to illustrate is that because I wanted to make the M15 work for me, it required a #5 reed. Not the other way around. I would have no problem going down a strength when getting a new mouthpiece.
In my experience players who use a strength 5 reed typically use it as a starting point to sand to their preference. I don't know anyone besides myself who uses them straight out of the box. In fact recently I had two fellow performance majors try my set up and both of them universally hated it. Keep in mind that one plays on a "golden era" buffet pre-R13 and the other uses Selmer signatures (so very different schools of thought)

All in all of you want to use 5's I'd say look for the closest mouthpiece facing. The Clark Fobes looks like a good possibly. But I've always been told to get the mouthpiece you like and find the right reed to optimise it.

Hoped that helped,

-GM

Reply To Message | Avail. Forums | Flat View

Newer Topic | Older Topic

Topics

Author

Date

Mouthpiece for V12 5 reeds? new

samoma1

2016-04-05 14:46