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Re: Lee Livengood

Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2023-12-29 22:26

"I guess that's a bit of a sore spot with me because I've heard the "that's such a small difference" argument before. I sat down with at least one mouthpiece maker who made the argument by saying, "well that's a difference less than the width of a human hair," rather than attempt a further adjustment."

Paul, even though I look upon this discussion as fruitless, I decided to look a little deeper into what one of your mouthpiece maker's remark about the "width of the human hair". Per Wikipedia, the human hair ranges from 17um to 181 um with a nominal width thickness being 75um. Converting this nominal value to mm yields 0.075mm. Lee Livengood's range is 0.02mm. (1.02-1.04mm) So, IMHO, Lee's "range" is actually much smaller than the nominal hair width thickness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair%27s_breadth

"If you look carefully at the dimensions listed for German mouthpieces
(Wurlitzer or Gelchweit or Maxton or ESM), for example, you'll find entirely separate models listed by differences of one, one hundredth of a millimeter. So I guess some folks aren't surprised by small differences."

Of course there are going to be voicing and playability differences between different makers even if they have the exact tip opening dimensions. Now, I know I'm not telling you things that you don't already know, however, what can make them entirely different is: 1) tip rail thickness; 2) facing length; 3) the arc of the facing curve; 4) the thickness of the rails; 5) the spacing between the side rails and their possible sloped angle; 6) the configuration of the throat and it's dimensions and 7) the depth and configuration of the baffle.

So, from my point of view, tip opening and facing length measurements actually don't reveal much about how a mouthpiece is going to sound nor can they reveal the playability factor.

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Dan Shusta

2018-02-28 00:06