Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2019-11-05 22:06
Fernie121 - I agree with all of your assessments. When I look at the BD5's and work on them, a lot of them for fellow players, I've worked on perhaps 50, BD5 mouthpieces. What is interesting is once these are adjusted they are far from DARK sounding. The baffle/chamber is not too deep so this produces a brighter sound if the mouthpiece is adjusted correctly. And it projects. But they need to be fixed. It's a confusing mouthpiece, because of the rails.
I've played at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and a dead dark sounding BD5 won't project in there. It's that simple, but as we now know if the refacer is good, he or she can get the BD5's to play really well in this type of a huge hall. Also the horns surely can decide which mouthpiece we might want to use. I know 3 out of the 4 Chicago Sym clarinet players and they all use different horns and mouthpieces. Let's face it this is a hard hall to play in. It also changes fast as people enter the hall. But also from playing in this hall we as players do NOT need hard reeds and large tip openings. As I stated above Mitchell Lurie was with Chicago and I think he used the lightest French style setup of all. Very light reeds, he used 3 1/2 strengths of his own brand, which I made. His mouthpiece was made by Pomarico. His reeds were not meant for the advanced pros but for advanced students mainly. His reeds were on the light side. Again, that old school French style which of course still sounds very good today. In the mid 1980's I did work with Mitchell to beef up his reeds just a shade. Since sales doubled to over 1 1/2 million of his reeds sold per year, he was indeed happy. He got 5 cents per reed sold.
We can all play on open mouthpieces with stiff reeds. But why suffer with embouchure issues if we don't have to. Clarinet playing shouldn't be painful!
One last comment, yes John Bruce Yeh uses a stiff setup but he plays with a double lip embouchure. Needless to say he probably doesn't bite nor have sore lips. Yes unusual for a double lip player, but this works for him and he sounds excellent. Is John using a smaller tip opening refaced by someone? I'm not sure. I'll try to text him.
I'm not saying BD5's are good mouthpieces. I think they are horrible! But if players want to have these adjusted they can project just fine and have no issues with embouchures. We need to be opened to the new type of schooling which is freedom in the mouthpieces. Dark is gone now. We know this now after some confusing years. All of the great players are switching over or have switched to mouthpieces that ping, ring, and project. Slightly bright sounding when you are close up. We can hear the sound differences just in the past year from Ricardo with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He's on new horns and mouthpieces. I'm happy! It's amazing how things change in just 1 year or less. I look forward to seeing changes in sound concepts the next couple of years. Maybe these places like Vandoren and Selmer will fix and make much better mouthpieces. I see these Custom mouthpieces selling for a lot of money, $700 and up to $2000. Not needed. Don't buy them. The sound differences between a fixed up Selmer Concept or Vandoren BD5 isn't worth that $700 to $2000 price tag. In reality these Custom mouthpieces only cost about $35. That's a huge markup. It's just not worth it.
Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces
Yamaha Artist 2015
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