Author: JTJC
Date: 2020-01-09 02:55
I went to Howarth in London to try these mouthpieces. I asked for the latest ones Walter had sent “slightly deeper chamber and lower baffle”. I was given those with serial numbers 304 and 348 to 351, so five mouthpieces.
As with Morrigan, these mouthpieces were not for me, mainly because the lays were relatively short at around 16+mm. I found it hard to assess the merits of these mouthpieces when they fundamentally didn’t suit me.
However, there were two things I found surprising about these mouthpieces. Firstly, the general surface finish is quite rough, but not so on the lay though. Nothing like high polish on the Vandorens or the dull matt/smooth finish on some other recent CNC models - Hawkins/Backun or D’Addario Evolution. This must be a design choice but I’m not so sure it’s a good one as it could be taken as a poor finish. Of course a rougher texture has advantages as it gives a better grip for the ligature, especially if using particular types of ligature and/or for thinner synthetic reeds.
I didn’t see a lot of evidence of hand finishing on the lays. On most of them I could see the pattern of machining from heel to tip rail. This suggests machining is achieving the required accuracy and finish.
The second surprising thing about all the mouthpieces was the width of the lay - approx. 15mm. This compares to the 13mm of an average cane reed, so leaves around 1mm of rail on either side of the reed. I didn’t measure the slot so can’t say what the effective width of the rails might be. I’d be interested to know why Walter chose to go with this design feature, especially since Fobes, Behn, Vandoren and many others go for far narrower (more ‘traditional’?) rails.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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