Tech/maintenance Let's face it ! Mouthpiece Facing Curve

[saxyjt]

@saxyjt how do you repair the silver plate? I've always bee loathe to adjust a silver plated brass piece because of this. Bare brass is useless in a mouthpiece.

So far I didn't really care, but now that you mention it I have another topic on my wish list. Plating abilities!

I've seen a video and it looks so simple and efficient.

 

[Phil]

Plating is not essentially difficult. It is , however, very exacting. Deviations and a lack of absolute cleanliness results in a variety of problems. Proper setup is expensive and you need a good space for it. I personally will not mess with it. I leave it to the plating pros. The majority of individual makers who also plate dont get the job done and their work develop problems over time...sometimes not a lot of it either.

 

[jbtsax]

I have been doing small plating projects in my shop for a few years. There is a steep learning curve even with the right supplies and equipment. I invested in this 6 station 1 liter plating station from Rio Grande Jewelry Supply. Another part of the expense is the plating solutions---gold @$400/liter, and silver @$150/liter, along with the correct anodes, brush plating wands, and electrical connectors. It is fun and interesting, but I will never get enough plating work to recoup my investment. I agree with Phil that the thickness of plating required for mouthpieces is best done in large industrial settings. Keys are more doable in a smaller set up like the one I have.

Gold Plating Services, the company in Utah where I buy plating solutions and supplies has produced some good videos demonstrating techniques and steps involved in both bath and brush plating if anyone is interested.

 

[saxyjt]

I have been doing small plating projects in my shop for a few years. There is a steep learning curve even with the right supplies and equipment. I invested in this 6 station 1 liter plating station from Rio Grande Jewelry Supply. Another part of the expense is the plating solutions---gold @$400/liter, and silver @$150/liter, along with the correct anodes, brush plating wands, and electrical connectors. It is fun and interesting, but I will never get enough plating work to recoup my investment.

It looks like this needs to be properly researched before going head on. But what got me started on the idea is a video I've seen that used very simple tools like an electrical supply (not detailled) a couple of connectors, one being fitted with some sort of cloth, dipped into the silver plating solution and brushed onto the surface being plated with amazing results. Looked so simple!

But then trying to find the tools, it's not so straight forward... I don't know the vocabulary and so it's difficult to find what you're searching for... Obviously!

That's no reason to give up on the idea. But I won't rush into it. I've been warned and I thank you all for it.

 

[saxyjt]

By the way @jbtsax , I remember this magnificent project you did a couple of years ago. Very impressive.

 

[jbtsax]

By the way, I remember this magnificent project you did a couple of years ago. Very impressive.

Thanks for the compliment. The sad ending to that story after all that work is that the owner of the Fender Rhodes while travelling back east to work on his doctorate had the U-Haul trailer with all his furniture, instruments, etc. come unhitched on the freeway virtually destroying all of its contents. 🙁 This project had a much more happy ending. This Pete Fountain model Leblanc is now in New Orleans with my friend Jory Woodis playing traditional jazz in "front porch bands" till the clubs and riverboat cruises reopen. 🙂

 

[saxyjt]

The sad ending to that story after all that work is that the owner of the Fender Rhodes while travelling back east to work on his doctorate had the U-Haul trailer with all his furniture, instruments, etc.

One of my best friends had a similar misadventure with a sailing boat. His boat had just been delivered to him and he drove back proudly with it on its trailer. As he approached home, he felt the trailer starting to behave strangely behind him and before he could realize something was wrong the whole thing went off and crossed the highway, 5 lanes there, the boat being on its side, completely trashing the hull and it sort of exploded into pieces as it reached the embankments.

He was properly insured and had another one built. But we had another adventure with that one as we were facing it around a lake on a 24h looping race... We completed the first loop, starting near the harbour where the starting and finishing lines were, rounding a mark away near a church saved from the waters as they created that artificial lake (it is a lake used to avoid overflow from the Seine in the winter season) and we were doing fine. Then we tacked almost in front of the harbour, but we heard a strange noise and the boat didn't lift back after the tack... It just kept rolling into the other side. My 3 crew mates went swimming while I climbed on the windward side of the hull. Dry!

We had lost the keel of this experimental ultralight displacement boat. It was a moveable keel, but it wasn't obviously built right! The next few hours, after my mates were (painfully) salvaged by inexperienced firemen and I cracked a few ribs trying to bring the sunken past and sails back up, were spent cleaning the mess and recovering our soaked clothes and useless mobile phones from the near wreck.

I had another troubled sailing experience with him a few years before, but I was not the black sheep or the one bringing bad luck. He retired early, living in some investments he made and decided to hunt for his dream boat. He had already owned a few very interesting one, including a 55' one designed trimaran that was a perfect blend of cruising comfort and performance, but his wife didn't like sailing so he sold it. He had her cross the atlantic before wedding her, but she passed the test... He was worth it, financially!

Anyways, his retirement didn't go as planned. First he spent a couple of years looking after his dying father, then a couple of years after buying his dream boat, he died of a nasty cancer he didn't see coming as he attributed his loss of appetite to the limited variety of his recently adopted vegan diet...

 

[jbtsax]

That's a sad story. 🙁 Let's see, what was the topic of this thread again. 😉

 

[saxyjt]

Let's see, what was the topic of this thread again. 😉

This was. Here a couple of Selmer tenor. One C* and a D. I found the ligature from the cheap Sound Man worked perfectly on those Selmer and it's actually quite good.

I worked on the D, the one above on the picture above!

Strange optic effect here, but both mouthpieces are the same size.

These are not the Jazz version. I have not had a Jazz one in hands, but from images I've seen, they look the same except from a baffle... So I might try them with an added baffle!

Blue tack, where are you? I want to play...

 

[Colin the Bear]

Bare brass is fine IMHO. The only way to repair plating is to replate using either dip method which is better or brush on method.

Bare brass in your mouth. Apart from the taste the digestive juices will soon rot it and ruin all that precision work, to say nothing of the ingestion of copper and zinc. Isn't that why they are plated?

 

[saxyjt]

I need to find a way to measure facing curves as accurately as possible so that I can plot them and compare them to well known math functions like x^(y) or cos(x) as they appear to be rather similar to the curve I have plotted so far. My gut feeling is that a variant of sin(x) or cos(x) (as they are basically the same thing with a change of origin) will provide a good template for a perfect facing curve!

I will post my findings here when I have more presentable material...

 

[saxyjt]

To give you a taste of what I'm doing, here is a comparison between a facing curve in blue and the x² & x³ curves...

More to come soon, I hope...

The curves are obviously exaggerated, but that's what you need to get a proper visual indication of what we're dealing with...

 

[rhysonsax]

Keith Bradbury (aka Mojo Bari) is a good mouthpiece refacer in the US who I think started out as a hobbyist. He has made lots of resources available for people interested in saxophone mouthpiece facing curves and modification work. He runs/ran a discussion group for like-minded people that I watched for a long while.

Among the resources he has available are various spreadsheets for plotting and analysing facing curve measurements. I think that many/most good facing curves are either a radial curve or part of an elipse, but there are variations away from that, for example for adding resistance or for clarinet mouthpieces.

A good place to start is a 24 slide PowerPoint presentation (with speaker notes) that Mojo put together in 2009 and can be downloaded here.

Rhys

 

[Colin the Bear]

3D scanner required?

 

[saxyjt]

A good place to start is a 24 slide PowerPoint presentation (with speaker notes) that Mojo put together in 2009 and can be downloaded here.

Thank you Rhys. I knew about Mojo, seen some videos a while back and I had in mind to check his work too.

It's FACINating! But I have a feeling that one of the most important part of the facing curve is the first half, not the area of the tip. It's the most difficult to measure precisely and reproduce accurately.

Generally speaking the curves appear to be very un-precise and uneven, not because they are uneven but so hard to measure with those tools.

 

[John Setchell]

Thank you Rhys. I knew about Mojo, seen some videos a while back and I had in mind to check his work too.

It's FACINating! But I have a feeling that one of the most important part of the facing curve is the first half, not the area of the tip. It's the most difficult to measure precisely and reproduce accurately.

Generally speaking the curves appear to be very un-precise and uneven, not because they are uneven but so hard to measure with those tools.

As the reed oscillates, at amplitudes that don’t approach closure at the tip - most of the time, Right? - the curve just upstream of the table is the most effective.
In my limited experience hard blowing to produce tip closure causes extreme harshness. Interesting if that’s the effect your after, but I doubt intended by Resurfacers. I suspect the Increasingly steep curve approaching the tip is intended to avoid closure.
But what do I know?...

 

[jbtsax]

As the reed oscillates, at amplitudes that don’t approach closure at the tip - most of the time, Right? - the curve just upstream of the table is the most effective.
In my limited experience hard blowing to produce tip closure causes extreme harshness. Interesting if that’s the effect your after, but I doubt intended by Resurfacers. I suspect the Increasingly steep curve approaching the tip is intended to avoid closure.
But what do I know?...

I know very little about how the facing curve of a mouthpiece affects the opening and closing of the tip opening as the reed vibrates, however this is some information from Benade's "Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics" that I found quite interesting.

FMA pp 441-2 "The above relationship means that, for example, that starting from pianissimo playing levels there are virtually no harmonics present in the tone beyond the fundamental; then, for every doubling in the amplitude of the fundamental component, harmonic 2 increases from its initial tiny value by a factor of 2² = 4; similarly harmonic 3 will grow by a factor of 2³ = 8 for each doubling of the fundamental component.

The simple relationship described in statement 1 [above] between the partials of a tone is only observed when the motion of the reed-valve parts themselves is of small enough amplitude that the variable pulsating airflow through them is never entirely shut off. Once the blowing pressure is raised to the point [about mf] where the reed is entirely closed for a portion of each cycle of its oscillation [called "beating"] , the player notices a change of feel, the listener notices a change of tone, and the higher partials tend to grow in a way that parallels the growth of the fundamental.

 

[jbtsax]

(continued from above . . .)
This means that a pianissimo playing, the tone is basically a "sine wave" and as we crescendo, the harmonics rapidly catch up in amplitude to the fundamental till the reed starts to "beat" and then they grow in amplitude at the same rate. I have tried starting a note pianissimo and then making a gradual crescendo and can feel and hear where the reed starts to beat and the "transformation" of sound and feel takes place.

It makes sense that mouthpieces with wider tip openings require more air and input energy before the reed closes during each cycle of vibration and that this takes place at a louder dynamic level (greater amplitude) than it does on a mouthpiece with a smaller tip opening.

 

[John Setchell]

I know very little about how the facing curve of a mouthpiece affects the opening and closing of the tip opening as the reed vibrates, however this is some information from Benade's "Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics" that I found quite interesting.

Thanks jbt. So the reed DOES routinely seat at the tip. Interesting...

 

[John Setchell]

(continued from above . . .)
This means that a pianissimo playing, the tone is basically a "sine wave" and as we crescendo, the harmonics rapidly catch up in amplitude to the fundamental till the reed starts to "beat" and then they grow in amplitude at the same rate. I have tried starting a note pianissimo and then making a gradual crescendo and can feel and hear where the reed starts to beat and the "transformation" of sound and feel takes place.

It makes sense that mouthpieces with wider tip openings require more air and input energy before the reed closes during each cycle of vibration and that this takes place at a louder dynamic level (greater amplitude) than it does on a mouthpiece with a smaller tip opening.

This has gone & got me thinking...
Do a Google search for In vivo

(continued from above . . .)
This means that a pianissimo playing, the tone is basically a "sine wave" and as we crescendo, the harmonics rapidly catch up in amplitude to the fundamental till the reed starts to "beat" and then they grow in amplitude at the same rate. I have tried starting a note pianissimo and then making a gradual crescendo and can feel and hear where the reed starts to beat and the "transformation" of sound and feel takes place.

It makes sense that mouthpieces with wider tip openings require more air and input energy before the reed closes during each cycle of vibration and that this takes place at a louder dynamic level (greater amplitude) than it does on a mouthpiece with a smaller tip opening.

This has got me thinking...
If you do a Google search for In Vivo Slow Motion Of saxophone Reed (I can’t post address here) it shows motion from inside the mouthpiece of normal note and “squeak”.
both start from reed closed (NOW I see importance of tongue-articulation!)
Interesting...