Posted by K on May 19, 2003 at 07:29:19:
In Reply to: Re: equipment geeks solicited... posted by how to? on May 19, 2003 at 06:24:21:
I am not Joe, but I have modified quite a number of mouthpieces. My main inspirations has been the texts by Vincent Bach as they can be read in company booklets and brouchures. The practical approach has been very much inspired by Leo Sørensen, solo euph in our Royal Guard band, who was a plumber before he studied at the conservatory.
There have been other texts read also, but the main points add up to this:
A long cylindrical throat will stabile the sound and make intonation slots more prominent. I experience such cylindrical throats as being very stifling on my playing.
An open throat will raise the upper range pitch. A very open throat will also raise the lower range pitch, leaving the midrange relatively flat. The latter approach is the one I tend to prefer, as I like the sound, the response, the feel, and whatever. The intonation can be handled because of the the great freedom such a set-up offers. But it also eats air by the truckload.
Narrow throats as found in the generic mouthpieces following student instruments make tone production easy, but they also flatten the upper range.
I only have two reamers myself. A candle shaped 13 mm one intended to clean out smoking pipes. And a standard one found in my small-town tool shop.
Both work best in the area, where I have had good results in my strive to take the most abrasive brightness off my sound: the lower, already widest, end of the backbore.
If I want less resistance, I have to go to the better equipped workshop of an out-of-town friend. He has several reamers, some of them slimmer and with a less steep conicity. With them I open up the throat from the backbore side. But generally only till I reach the point, where the throat opens up towards the cup. That is: I don't enlarge the smallest diameter of the throat. I only remove its cylindrical portion. With the quality of the mouthpieces, which I buy, I can have no ambitions of bettering the inner profile of the cup.
There are 2 or 3 exceptions. I wanted more sound out of the DW4AY used on my B&H Imperial Brit style baritone, so there I have opened up the lower end of the cup, where it approaches the narrowest point of the throat. Works well for me, but it is a great risk to take, so I cannot recommend this procedure.
In a horn mouthpiece I have moved the narrowest point of the throat downwards towards the backbore. Gives a marvellous low range and I still use the same mouthpiece on my flugelhorns (via an adapter).
I have not yet ruined a mouthpiece myself, but if one is not prepared to loose a mouthpiece, one should not work on it. For anybody but for the most specialised pro's (of which I am not one) mouthpiece modification is a risky business.
Klaus