Fascinating. Good voice tonality. Good speaking rhythm. Good camera work. I am a beginner sax player trying to learn everything. I enjoyed this very much.
I test played a set of tenor mouthpieces today. The Berg Larsen I started with two decades ago was now unplayable. When there are problems with a mouthpiece the problems may lie in the player's experience, their mouth, their teeth, the horn, the reed or, indeed, the mouthpiece. I sent an original C-Melody mouthpiece to a leading Australian mouthpiece expert with a view to having it refaced. He replied that it was an awful mouthpiece, that he might be able to do "something" with it, but it would be expensive and had I thought of finding modern one. I took his advice and bought a Faxx. It does the job well. A musician in a community band I play in saw videos like this, decided it would be easy and spent a day rendering a $400 metal Selmer totally unplayable. He then turned it over to my friend, a highly qualified repairman, who then asked my advice, which was to turn the job down. My inclination is that, if I have a $400 mouthpiece that I don't like (and I do have one at the moment) I will sell it and spend the money on a mouthpiece that I do like.(or a few cases of New Zealand pinot noir). If I want to try this, and I am tempted, I will use the mouthpieces so kindly supplied for this purpose by the manufacturers of the cheapest saxophones on the market.
Where did you obtain all your tools for measuring the opening of the lay of the mouthpiece etc., or have you made them yourself? Really informative videos by the way.
Hello , I wanted to make an inquiry , I have a link master tenor sax numero 4 , and 5 wanted change , few millimeters have to have the opening ? ones would have to iron single curve beginning? will have some video to show me. I am from Argentina . tools have the digital gauge . thx
My tools come from different sources. There is no one stop place. Music medic has most these days. Finding larger feeler gage sizes is a real hassle. Check out my measuring video where I discuss these. The Yahoo Mouthpiece Work group has a lot of good discussions and resources.
I have this Soprano sax mouthpiece, and the tips is very fat/big and don't give me that great sound, I'm in Santo Domingo Domiminca Rep. how can I send it to you for you to fix it for me,
Okay. I was wondering if you might be able to tell me why a mouthpiece can't play low notes from F on down to Bb. I can force the F and E but the lower I go, the more it fights back - down to nothing but harmonics and overtones. No low notes whatsoever. I've tried different strength reeds, adjusting reed/ligature position - softer reeds did better producing a thin very closed sounding notes which was very hard to produce but still no where near a professional or even the regular sound of a tenor sax. It sounded more like a giant mechanical duck or train horn or something. I can't remember ever having a problem like this with a mouthpiece. In the past, that problem occurred but it was the horn. This time, it is definitely the mouthpiece - a new one I just acquired. Any thoughts as to why that would happen? Thanks.
Dorian Gray I would need to measure the facing to see what may be wrong. See if another player can make it work. You may get some ideas from that test.
Thanks for that tip. I took all my playable mouthpieces to a tech who eventually pointed out that this mouthpiece basically doesn't have a tip opening. He put them on the table to show me. I could see the differences very easily. The mouthpiece I'm having trouble with looked basically flat. I think I want to pursue making it playable. I believe it can be a really good mouthpiece. Any tips on how a novice could open the tip some without destroying it?
