Re: Physics of mouthpieces and buzzing


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Posted by Marty Neilan on September 13, 1999 at 14:55:45:

In Reply to: Physics of mouthpieces and buzzing posted by Lonny on September 12, 1999 at 13:30:59:

I find your test interesting, but perhaps vary inaccurate. One of the things that makes a heavyweight work (and expensive) is that it is machined from a SINGLE piece of brass. I myself considered sticking part of a mouthpiece on another to make a heavyweight wannabe. The problem with that is that, unless you are an incredible machinist, you will only have limited points of contact. Then, you are doing all kind of things with random nodal points on the mouthpiece with those contact points, and that is way beyond someone like me to figure out which are good and which are bad. Filling the gaps with solder will only serve to deaden it. Even if you were to have absolute contact between the mouthpiece and the heavyweight addon, the 'grain' or direction of the brass molecules will probably not match, thus still affecting the vibration pattern. I think the best side by side would be a heavyweight and lightweight of the exact same mouthpiece, like Jay has done. Also, Jay mentions the weight being at the bottom of the cup. Anyone playing on an original Mirafone C4 will notice that it weighs a lot more than most other mouthpieces because it has a very shallow cup but looks very 'deep' on the outside. All that weight 'below' the cup seems to have a positive affect on the stability and perhaps the core of the sound. Likewise, a Conn2 'tornado' shaped mouthpiece used to be a common starter for custom hellebergs. The Conn2 has a lot more weight on the rim only, and seems to give a more solid attack - because of that mass right there the mouthpiece doesn't want to bounce off the lips with every articulation. My design combined the very heavy rim of the Conn2 with the extra mass below the cup of the C4 to achieve both these advantages. I would like to see someone else try mine (not one done 10-20 years ago) next to a CB-AJ and see what they say.

Marty Neilan


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