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Re: Vintage, or Vintage Clone?

Author: Shorthand
Date: 2006-01-02 23:57

I have to agree with Dr. Henderson's last post. AFAIK, the physics of a reed are not well enough understood to be able to accurately model the acoustics of a mouthpiece. Its a turbulent environment with a variable geometry that we don't quite understand, and the best fluid dynamicists around still mainly use trial and error in turbulent fluid flow modelling.

I do think, however, that there are only about 5 things that would determine a mouthpiece's characteristics:

1: Dimensions
2: Surface Roughness
3: Surface Roughness Direction
4: Material Density
5: Speed of Sound in the material

(Perhaps also shear, tensile, stress/strain constants (Young's Modulus and its friend? - I forget the names - but they're closely related to speed of sound.)

Doing nondestructive speed of sound tests on existing mouthpieces should be pretty straightforward. Has anyone tried?

Remember that it took centuries to figure out that what made the Stradivarii impossible to even get close to in tone was that the wood was transpored by river and therefore waterlogged. Now they are getting much closer with modern fine violins.

Surface roughness is actually extremely hard to reproduce accurately in a space like a mouthpiece bore while also maintaining narrow dimensional tolerances. Its also small enough where its hard to measure with a laser, especially a red one. Also, like Dr. Henderson said, any time you machine something or cast it or whatever you change what's called the residual stress profile (OK, its really a tensor, but we won't go there). There is pushing and pulling within the piece and it will settle into a slightly different shape. While you can minimize this with certain materials or by machining a rough cut, letting it settle for a few days (or annealing it) and then make a small finishing cut, you'll never really be able to zereo it out in anything except a metal (or some glasses should probably be OK.)

You never will replace an artisan. However, it might be interesting if Greg is doing his adjustment work on a computer and then the mouthpiece is made at a central machining facility and drop shipped to the customer to try.

The last thing to remember is that part of what's going on here is that the Kaspars on the first R-13's are what set the standard for the clarinet sound. The 30-50's were the golden age of the clarinet as people finally figured out how to make great Boehm and Albert/Oehler system instruments. I don't know if its a good or bad thing that innovation has really stagnated since then - there have been no major steps forward, but instead mainly variation based on personal taste.

Honestly, forget the mouthpiece debate, I'm waiting for Legere to start simulating the grain in reeds, as I think that's the last major step they need to really simulate the behavior of cane.

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Vintage, or Vintage Clone? new

Brenda Siewert

2005-12-29 15:16