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RE: Viotto's french mouthpiece?

Author: Greg
Date: 1999-07-29 04:29

JJ wrote:
-------------------------------
Greg:
what makes a hand faced mouthpiece superior
to machine faced one if the machine can have
a higher precision on the dimension and
be more consistent?

thanks!

JJ
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Dear JJ,

A machine is not necessarily more accurate or consistent with dimensions when it comes to facings or any other part of a mouthpiece. I would even argue that the degree of accuracy to which you are refering with machines, in the end, produces a far lesser degree of consistently excellent mouthpieces. As every hand mouthpiece maker would tell you...exact NUMBERS are relevant only to a certain point...and machines aren't all that consistent with their attemt at putting on exact facing numbers either!

How many Vandorens, Woodwinds, etc. does one have to go through to find a playable mouthpiece (without touch up) let alone one for the highest level of performance? Or to answer your question rhetorically - how come with all of the supposed accuracy of machines do these mouthpieces vary so dramatically from one to the next?

The answer is simple really. One major factor not controlled by machines includes the almost impossible to attain: consistency and quality of the material itself. Selmer is the only company left making their mouthpieces from a rod and not from injection moulding. This helps a little with the consistency of material problem but the style of their mouthpieces are, as I see it, not well recieved by many professionals in this country. Besides, Selmers are machine made anyway.

It takes a human to play the mouthpiece as they are made - to give it the advantage of consistency, varying the numbers MINUTELY here and there to get actual results instead of hands off theoretical ones. Of course there are certain acoustical parameters one relies on when doing this. A certain amount of customization beyond even that can be done for any particular player but consistency of a product of the type that I make is heavily reliant on the human tester - me.

Does this help?

Greg

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