Lower Chamber Ramp - How Significant?

[Tom Goodrick]

When I got my new Babbit New York Link, I examined it very carefully for workmanship defects. I did not find any that are obvious. One thing troubled me and I checked it on my other HR mpc's - Link and Yanagisawa. That is the place where the lower front of the chamber meets the edge of the table just above the cut back into the table after the rails. I would think that this should provide a smooth ramp for the sound waves passing up into the chamber. Certainly the upper surface of the chamber is smooth and formed with care. Why is this lower entrance to the chamber allowed to be rather blunt? On the Yani mpc, it is a thick vertical cut at least 1/16th inch thick from the table up to the lower surface of the chamber. That mpc is remarkably responsive. I am surprized with such an abrupt change in crossection opposing the sound waves. On the New York Link it just looks like they left some extra material there and did not grind it down.

I am tempted to grind it slightly with a Dremel tool just to make a smooth ramp from the reed upper surface into the chamber.

Would this have any effect?

The NY Link is a little brighter than I expected after playing the HR Link. If I reduce the air pressure for a softer sound, low notes get very fuzzy or breathy (but I am still working on learning the NY Link.)

[MojoBari]

I've only seen 2 references that talk about this area. Ferron's book (Sax Is My Voice)claims that sound waves bounce off a blunt ramp back towards the mouthpiece tip. He says this adds high harmonic distortion to the sound giving some edge.

Wyman did a paper in 1972 that studied alto sax mouthpieces emperically. He did a small side test where he took a blunt ramp and made it sharper in 2 steps. He took frequency spectrums and made play test observations. He concluded that some bluntness was good for tone quality. It provided some resistance to blow against. But he did not test many mouthpieces, players, reeds, etc. He may have gotten different results if he trimmed his reed up a little to compensate for the lower resistance. In the rest of the paper, he does have results from many alto sax mouthpieces, but they do not focus on the ramp area.

If I see something very blunt or ugly in this area, I tend to like to thin it some. I think it helps deliver a free blowing clear tone. There are many ways to add edge to a clear tone, but it is more difficult to clean up an edgy one.

[Tom Goodrick]

Thanks for the tip. I'll wait a bit before I do anything to that mpc. Right now it is looking like I may have to set that one aside and go back to my HR Link. After every practice session with the New York Link, my lower lip gets sore and swollen. My intent is to start working as lead horn with piano, drums and bass but I must be able to switch between the tenor and trombone, trumpet or flugel horn. This has seriously messed up my chops for those horns. I have sanded down the edges of the reed I use with that mpc (Vandoren V16 2 1/2) and have tried various amounts of lower-lip curl. Nothing seems to help. I had never had a problem until this mpc.