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Time to rail against mouthpiece makers

Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2018-08-10 21:09

There is a tendency for many mouthpiece makers and/or re-facers to be cagey about the basic facing dimensions of their products at least for the US market. I will start with Vandoren. They do offer a chart of their tip openings but when it comes the the length of the lay we get something like, "long" or "medium long," whatever that is in the metric system. But it doesn't stop their. Many of our home grown re-facers don't publish both specs or even furnish them upon request.

Why is this an issue? For example, I was (as backwards is this sounds) initially getting stonewalled over facing size while trying to match a mouthpiece to a specific Legere reed. There is a tendency for certain cuts or formulations (Signature or standard) to work better for some players. Once I found a winning "formula" for my reed, I wanted to continue having the success with that combination while still fine tuning what mouthpieces can do for it.

This brings me to the latest Legere issue. Recently I ran across a Legere video of Ricardo Morales endorsing the Legere reeds where he mentions the cuts and strengths he uses. Those two comparable Legeres happened to be a 3.75 strength European Signature Bb Clarinet reed vs. a 3.5 strength Signature Soprano Sax reed.

When I received my versions of these reeds (different strengths for my mouthpieces of course) the differential was much greater on my primary mouthpiece which is a particularly short lay of 14.00mm. For me the strength difference on my short lay works out to be .75 (three quarters). That's a pretty significant error in results! However, when trying a more standard mouthpiece with a lay of 18mm the differential was back to a quarter strength as stated by Morales and others on this board.

Ok...so I just find what works for me and shut up. That's fine but I think as more and more clarinetists discover how to make Legeres work, they will also find that knowing (at bare minimum) the facing dimensions of their mouthpiece and what they will want in the future becomes more and more crucial.

German mouthpiece makers and German websites don't seem to treat mouthpiece dimensions like state secrets as you can see on either Thomann.de:

https://www.thomann.de/gb/wurlitzer_m3.htm

or Maxton.at:

https://shop.maxton.at/DesktopModules/WebShop/shopexd.aspx?id=210&productid=1024

I understand that there are other factors that determine how a mouthpiece feels and plays and getting the customer in the door sometimes depends on the "mystery" of it all. But I think now that we have lost Zinner and have to rethink where mouthpieces come from, let's start rethinking what is helpful to the consumer and how to go about getting them to try your product.

...................Paul Aviles

Post Edited (2018-08-10 21:48)

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