The Clarinet BBoard

Re: Mouthpiece repairs

Author: Bob Bernardo  Date:   2018-07-06 10:31 Thanks for recommending me Tony. Please forgive this long history. It's worth reading. I do work on Kaspar's but only the Chicago and Cicero's. Not the Ann Arbor models, because the baffle/chamber of the Ann Arbor's are too shallow and the sound is surely bright. I'll put a facing on the Ann Arbor's, but I won't work on the chambers. So it takes forever to get that great rich sound out of them. I actually have a Kaspar that Marcellus gave me which I use as a model. It's a Cicero/Chedeville. Kaspar bought some Chedevilles when he was based in Cicero. and made some changes to them, such as thinner rails and a larger bore. This is one of them which I have. The chamber area was also deeper towards the table. This type of work I can do. Marcellus was said to play on a tip opening of 1.10 to 1.11. But I found that the tip openings were measured wrong and he was at 1.09. I think my gauge is more accurate. He also bought mouthpieces in lots of 8, keeping 1 or 2, sometimes none of them for himself, and giving the rest to his students. There were some leftover Chedevilles in Chicago. So these are pretty darn good too. When Chedeville closed up and a new model was made it wasn't the same. Not even close. So they started buying blanks from other sources including Babbitt. The Babbitt blanks were decent, but too wide between the left and right windows. The bores were excellent. So this was the end of the great Kaspar run. Around the early to mid 1970's. Some can be fixed with several coats of nail polish and play very well. I have 2 or 3 Babbitt Kaspars around and if anyone wants one don't pick pint nail polish. I won't do it! Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces Yamaha Artist 2015

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