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Robert Marcellus's mouthpiece

Author: doctoxin51
Date: 2020-11-22 05:49

I have been reading some posts and there seems to be a lot of misconceptions about what mouthpiece Marcellus used and the tip opening. I was a student of his, perhaps his youngest student. In 1968 I was still high school and he took me as a student. I was playing on a Selmer Signet with an HS** mouthpiece. During my first lesson he stopped me from playing, took my clarinet, pulled the mouthpiece off and threw it in the trash. He then put his mouthpiece on my clarinet and had me play again. He grabbed my clarinet took his mouthpiece off, threw my clarinet on to his couch and put his mouthpiece back on his clarinet, handed it to me and told me to play again. It was incredible. At the end of the lesson he told me to keep the his clarinet and mouthpiece and calmly said I owed him $350.
I am still playing on that same clarinet and mouthpiece today...Buffet R13 and Kaspar 13. The tip opening is 1.13, not 1.09 like I have read somewhere on this web site. The assistant 1st at the time was Ted Johnson. Ted played on a Kaspar 11, which had a tip opening of....1.10. I bought one of those as well for $25 but is never played as good as the 13. I sold the 11 20 years later for $500.
I did get a new mouthpiece recently because I'm actually playing more at almost 70 years old than I did when I left professional music 30 years ago. The mouthpiece I have plays very close to the Kaspar. The Kaspar 13 is very bright and new one is darker. What is it?
I bought a Backun Vocalise CG. Backun says it is between a BD4 and B40 Vandoren (115.5 and 117.5). I really like it. No, I am not retiring my Kaspar 13, just giving it a long deserved rest. I am playing Legere Signature European 2.5.
Marcellus played solely on Morre' Facon. When I still used cane reeds I did the same until I couldn't find them anywhere. The Legere is as close to the Morre' as I have found. I think Marcellus would have like Backun mouthpiece and the Legere reeds.

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