Author: Markos
Date: 2017-12-05 19:29
markcr:
Excellent questions.......Disclaimer, Clark Fobes and I are very good friends. I have known Fobes well since 1985. I have consulted with him on mouthpieces, watched him switch from repair work to mouthpiece work exclusively, played a lot of golf with him, and now if he'd only stop hitting on my girlfriend....but that's another story!
I play a Fobes clarinet mouthpiece with a 3L facing, which is in between his more open 4L and his closer 2L. The blank is an old blank that he no longer uses, but it is similar to his intermediate Nova model.
I also carry 64 and 65 mm Fobes delrin barrels for the Yamaha plastic. Fobes makes them especially for the plastic student clarinets and they are incredible. My Yamaha clarinet, which I've had since the mid 90's, has cork pads in the upper joint. With this set up I use Vandoren V12 reeds, I practice on the 2 1/2's and play gigs on the 3's. Here is a link to a blog post on my website about Reed Care and Maintenance.....
http://marksowlakis.com/clarinetsaxophone-reed-care-reed-maintenance/
On my Soundcloud page check out the Turkish Miniatures, they were recorded on the Yamaha plastic....https://soundcloud.com/user-84203206
Actually my entire recording Marking Time is all on the Yamaha plastic.
Perry Robinson has recorded a lot on his Yamaha plastic, he loves it as well.....
I have never really had any luck with Vandoren mouthpieces.
Fobes Cocobollo barrels are wonderful, I use them on my Buffets......
Back in the early 90's when I was in NYC I had a few lessons with Eddie Daniels. He was using Buffet Prestige clarinets with Kaspar mouthpieces and Vandoren reeds then. I often use my Prestige for recordings sessions still......to me this period of Eddie, the GRP recordings, is where he sounds his absolute best. To me the low end of the Prestige, at least on my horn, is really warm and gorgeous. I also have a standard R-13 silver that gets used around the house a lot. The Yamaha goes everywhere.
Mike Manning in SF, formerly of NYC, is a great repairman and makes great custom cases......
Best of luck......Markos
|
|