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Re: Vintage, or Vintage Clone?

Author: Gregory Smith ★2017
Date: 2006-01-03 00:55

Shorthand said:

"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."

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Absolutely not. I have but one of those "old fashioned" lathes for holding reamers, many bore reamers, glass gages, feeler gages, tip wands, sandpaper and other abrasive types galore, and most importantly, many tools for the all important finishing that I've made myself from scratch. I use almost all of them with each and every mouthpiece.

I receive pre-designed semi-finished (very "semi") machined blanks from Zinner - blanks that I've designed after many visits to his workshop in Bavaria over a period of many years. I handwork every aspact of the semi-finished blank until it plays in a completely finished manner to the degree that I personally would be comfortable taking that mouthpiece down to a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert on any given night and play it in concert. That seems to be the acid test to me.

I then speak personally with each and every one of my potential and returning clients to determine what their needs are before diagnosing what it is that they want/need to fulfill their wishes.

It is my observation based on extensive experience that one cannot achieve anywhere near the same consistency and level of quality from a line of machine made mouthpieces compared to well made hand-worked mouthpieces - even those that advertise their machine made mouthpieces dubiously as hand "FINISHED".

Maybe cosmetically they're hand finished but there is no clarinetist and craftsman/artisan on the "finishing" end of the process to use their artisianship that I believe is needed to create a mouthpiece that lives up to it's full potential.

From my point of view, it's just not possible to accomplish that any other way. Those that play machine made mouthpieces at the highest level in the profession are playing one mouthpiece in fifty - prescreened by testers in and outside of the company - or end up going through many, many a mouthpiece themselves. Or, if not, a very high degree of luck has been visited upon them.

Gregory Smith

Post Edited (2006-01-03 02:33)

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Vintage, or Vintage Clone? new

Brenda Siewert

2005-12-29 15:16