Great article Pete. Does you taming block work also on mouthpieces with the "taste of hell" (sulphur)?
It will reduce it slightly, as will lovingly massaging some olive oil into it.
I have found that the taste of hell is made much worse by leaving moutpieces in direct sunlight (I think I mention that).
I have some other throries about improving things in that regard, but need to do some experimentation. It's basically this:
My experiemnts with vinegar to see if it damaged the HR showed me that it does cause some roughening of the surface, hence the method of just using a vinegary cotton swab inside.
But it's possible that what the vinagr does to the outside can be sorted by using the Taming Block, in which case it makes sense to:
- Soak entire mouthpiece in vinegar.
- Soak in Olive oil.
- Polish with Taming Block
The theory:
The vinegar may actually permeate the HR and considerably reduce or mask the taste of hell. It may also make the surface slightly porous, meaning that the subsequent bath of oilve oil will soak in a bit and improve even further, and possibly reduce the taste of vinegar (which may actually be worse than the sulphur)
The Taming block then seals and shines the mouthpiece.
If anybody wants to send me an old mouthpiece that tatses of hell I will be very happy to test the theory on it.
