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Re: Silverstein ligatures

Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2018-06-20 08:55

For the money the reverse Bonade is great. $30 or so. At one point they were the best during the 1960's 1970's, then inventors started playing around with new ligatures. Today you can pay up to $900 to $1000 for a ligature with a diamond included. Some ligatures sadly scratch your beautiful $500 to $2000 plus mouthpieces.

The Rovner is a good idea for protecting a your mouthpiece. Also Vandoren makes something pretty cool. It's sorta like playing on a German ligature, the concept is there. Just certain points touch the mouthpiece. But it is overkill.

My own thoughts are I like very lightweight ligatures. The Germans use a string. That's very lightweight. I will often gut out a metal ligature as much as I can using a grinder and metal and shears and smooth it with sandpaper, then glue in very thin pieces of soft rubber at the points were the tiny piece of rubber touches the reeds, pretty much 4 corners of the ligature. Contact Cement works well. Then also on the points were the ligature would touch the mouthpiece to prevent scratches. This allows the mouthpiece and the reeds to vibrate as one unit. The theory behind this wacky idea is when we test reeds for the first time our thumb is often the best ligature. Kinda like a string as the Germans do. So I tried to make a ligature similar to that thumb feel.

It's kind of fun to make your own ligatures then compare them to each other. It's surprising how much differences they can make with your sound, articulation, feel of the mouthpiece, all of that. A live sound, a dead sound all can be part of your ligature. You will surely feel differences and I don't think you have to spend $900 or even $75 for a ligature to get the results you want.

Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces

Yamaha Artist 2015

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