Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2017-08-05 09:08
Well I'm with Tom Puwalski on pretty much everything he has to say. I want an App too!
An interesting story at the convention. I offered a free mouthpiece check to see if the rails were straight, all of that. I wrote down bore measurements, facing measurements, anything you can think of. For free I even fixed a few facings that were off. Actually I adjusted about 30 mouthpieces at no charge.
One kid, a high school kid had a Tosca clarinet, a beautiful $300 plus ligature and a Vandoren mouthpiece. The Vandoren mouthpiece was nicked, scratched and the tip was chipped. I told him and also his mom he needed a new mouthpiece. It was beyond repair. The comment was with all of this wonderful new stuff he doesn't need a mouthpiece. He's just fine with that mouthpiece. Again it had a chip at the tip!
I kind of wanted to scream! Stupid people.
Every mouthpiece facing changes from wear, from dropping it, from the ligature hitting the tip. So it is necessary to always keep it in good condition. Have it checked every year.
Another situation happened. Someone bought one of my mouthpieces. The next day he said it felt stuffy, could I adjust it. I told him to come back in 2 hours. I put the mouthpiece on the table and didn't touch it. He came back later and said how great it was. I asked him about reeds and he just put a new reed on the mouthpiece. DUH!!!
So Tom is right. You need to know how to adjust reeds. You need a great reed or reeds to try out mouthpieces, horns, all of that. Teachers must teach the students all about reeds and mouthpieces. You can sound great on an inexpensive Yamaha and you can sound worse on a $20,000 clarinet.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
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The Clarinet BBoard
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