Well yesterday was a beautiful sunny Sunday here in the Metro Vancouver area. And what’s the best thing to do on a sunny day? Well go for a drive of course.
The advertising hype always said the Pontiac Grand Am was made for drivers. I’m just not so convinced that this was the kind of driver GM was trying to attract! 😯
Sunday Driver
What works reasonably well is a ligature I made for my metal Meyer tenor piece. Unfortunately, I’d like to sell said Meyer, and the ligature would go with it even if it is a hack job. I cut a generic alto ligature at the top, bent it to fit the Meyer, and soldered it back together. It’s ugly, but it works perfectly.
I have never particularly liked Rovner ligatures, but I also do not believe a ligature should be changing the sound, because it can only do so by subtraction. To me, a ligature is superior if it allows a greater proportion of mediocre reeds to play like good reeds, and makes some good reeds play like great reeds. To that end, Fibracells are pretty ligature-agnostic. As long as they’re held firmly in place, they’re happy. Thus I’d rather go with a plain two-screw ligature that actually FITS… or maybe get the existing one stretched a bit.
I’m not a huge fan of the Berg Ligs either. I found that using a Rovner on the new (to me), vintage, stainless steel Berg bari piece I recently got from a friend, does a really good job. It holds the reed in place very effectively, and doesn’t splinter the reed of course: Which for a Fibracell would be disastrous. The Kevlar fibers are extremely painful, but beyond that, this type of damage also begins the process of destroying the reed.
I was playing the Berg on alto last night, and I noticed that it pushes over to the bright side easier than it did when it was 115 M (I had to go pretty much 100% then), and when I back off a lot it starts to get the Paul Desmond “dry martini” sound. That’s good, I have never had a piece that effectively did that before. In between it sounds like a good HR piece.
A very odd duck it has turned out to be, but overall I find that I like it. The Berg ligature sucks — it’s too tight and the knurled screws are torture to tension up — but I swapped the screws with another ligature and that helps. It’s still so tight that it’s tearing up the cover on the Fibracells. Oh well, as long as they don’t start sending splinters where I can get them stuck in me, I suppose it doesn’t matter.
You’ve been a busy guy Mal-2. And yes, I’d say you’re suffering a bit from G.A.S., but it’s all good. :devil2:
When do you expect to get your new C Melody? Last I read, Alan really seems to like his, but he seems a bit distracted of late with his other, new acquisitions. 😈
I’ve never heard of Drake mouthpieces, but then I’m pretty much out of the loop these days. I stick to “my sound”, because I like it. It works for me. It’s what I’m known for.
The Dukoffs on tenor, and the Berg or Metalite on bari, depending on the style of music. I don’t have the opportunity to play alto, and I can’t play the soprano at the moment. Both cause too much increase in my intracranial pressure. (Altissimo on tenor isn’t good for me either, so I’ve cut back on it. But that too is what I’m known for, so I do have play it at least once in each song.)
I like your story about altering your Berg tenor piece.
I have a stainless steel Berg bari piece that came brand new with my Mark VI bari when I bought it 11 years ago. The piece is a 120/0 SMS. It is perfectly made, and there is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to play it… But I just can’t. I squeal and screech like I was just learning how to play. It doesn’t matter what reed I try. What strength. Nothing works. The sales guy at the shop who sold me the sax hand picked it for me, after play-testing all of them. It was the best of all of them.
I tried to sell/trade it on SOTW years ago, and the response too was underwhelming. One day perhaps I will find it a good home.(BTW, I’ve had other bari players try it, and it does work for them, so it really is just me…Weird.) 😯
I have G.A.S. as well — over the weekend I ponied up for both an Aquilasax C-mel and a Drake ceramic “Contemporary” tenor piece. I don’t have the new horn yet but I do have the mouthpiece, and it’s a shocker. For one thing, it’s probably the most responsive stock piece I’ve ever played. For another, the facing curve is PERFECT. I mean they really nailed it. (Unlike a certain maker of stainless steel pieces.) Also noteworthy but ultimately irrelevant is that it weighs so little. It has a copper insert in the shank, and I think without that it might actually float in water.
If you’ve ever played on a Link and thought “I wish I could get one of these with a wedge, and not have to mortgage the house for it”, look at the Drake “Contemporary”. If you ever bought a Link and thought “I wish I could get one that plays out of the box instead of needing a refacing”, get a “Double Ring”. You’ll pay the same as you would for a Link, and it will JUST WORK. You will need a ligature and cap from somewhere, but both the alto and tenor varieties are sized to take standard alto ligatures. I find this a plus since I have a Winslow that would otherwise gather dust, since I now play a (heavily modified) tenor Berg on alto.
Oh yeah, I bought a stainless steel Berg 115/0 M, and promptly found I do not like the M facing AT ALL. I tried to list it for trade (I wanted to trade straight up for an SMS facing) but the response was underwhelming. So, I hacked the facing down to about 85 SMS — it takes MANY HOURS to alter a stainless steel piece THAT much with sandpaper alone — and found it liked alto reeds better than tenor reeds. I figured why not pop it on the alto, and found that it actually sounded GOOD, and not at all paint-peeler bright like I would have expected. Since this put the shank past the end of the cork, I cut down the shank too (the entire maker stamp is gone) and it even LOOKS like an alto piece.
I would never have expected it from a 0 chamber Berg, but it’s a very well balanced sound. I was previously complaining that every mouthpiece sounds like a paint peeler on my Jupiter alto. Imagine the surprise when I pair it with something that SHOULD by all rights be a paint peeler, and find it’s the best middle-of-the-road alto piece I’ve ever attached to this horn!
On the bright side, my attack of mouthpiece G.A.S. has probably ended my desire for a third alto.
haha, interesting. So it was replaced by a custom Z, eh? I tried a few of those out and liked the sound, seemed somewhat similar to my Keilwerth actually.
Seems like you have quite a collection going.
Yes, yes I do actually. I didn’t mean for it to happen. It just seemed to creep up on me one day. One day I have 1 rare saxophone. A few years later I have 3 or 4 (depending on how you define rare.) I also have a couple more I’ve just committed myself to.
I’m sure I have an illness, I just don’t know what it is… I’m deeply in denial that it might be G.A.S. :devil2:
My friend, and fellow sax player whose band I used to play in, Ray Myers, called me a few weeks ago and told me he was suffering from the same illness I was. I got really worried, and thought he had developed a neurological problem. When I asked him, in all seriousness, what his symptoms were, his response was: I just bought another saxophone. (It was his 3rd in about 2 months.) 😆 I gave him shit, and told him not to ever scare me like that again. Then I wanted to know all about the horn….
Yeah… It’s an illness alright… 😈
No, it’s my Gallotone. A strange vintage Italian horn that according a Rampone & Cazzani rep. seems to be a hybrid between a Rampone & Cazzani and an Orsi.
A few of my Mark VIs are getting out a little later today for a “trip” in a German sports car. The Gallotone and the Grand Prix was just a test drive. 😉
Mark VI?
I tried out the blog roll feature on my site yesterday, put your site up there since you talk about some cool stuff on here.
Checked out your links to saxophone acoustics too, I studied physics so it seemed interesting.