[Jsharp]

I am playing a #3 Legere or Vandoren (blue box) with a Jody Jazz Bass #8 mouthpiece on my 1927 Conn Bass. While the intonation, projection, and efficiency of the mouthpiece is fantastic, I can't seem to get rid of a buzz in the sound which I hate. I want to keep all the listed attributes but with a rounder clearer sound ... without the "buzz"

I have experimented with a lot of reed options with unsatisfactory results. The old pickle barrel style mouthpieces will not meet my needs. Any suggestions out there?

 

[MojoBari]

Try harder reeds or trim them up as a test. If the buzz goes away but it is too hard to blow, then you need a smaller tip opening to work with the harder reeds. Legeres are dark and probably a good move to stick with them. If it does not go away, you should try a lower baffle.

 

[Tom Goodrick]

How about trying a Rovner lig, either a dark or one of their lighter styles?

 

[Atonal]

Jody Jazz DV is a high baffle piece. It's going to have some buzz.

 

[MartinMods]

Make some experimental putty baffles in the old pickle barrel piece - lower than that of the JJ DV. You should be able to get it to do what you want via baffle/refacing.

 

[Jsharp]

Thanks for the advice!

Unfortunately Vandoren's don't come in half sizes in Bass Sax and the 3 1/4 Legere's seem just a bit too strong ... however the buzz IS reduced.

I really want to make the Legeres work because of the durability and long run cost of the reeds.

In an ideal world I would get something like the DV NY but Jody refuses to do any work on this piece.

Maybe I will try the Rovner lig. I am currently using a FL at the moment and there is so much vibration I can literally hear the buzz coming directly off the mouthpiece.

Benedikt Eppelsheim suggested I try a 54S-8Bs (Zinner?). Does anyone know where I can find one of these? He doesn't have any extras to sell at the moment.

 

[mfry]

Make some experimental putty baffles in the old pickle barrel piece - lower than that of the JJ DV. You should be able to get it to do what you want via baffle/refacing.

This. I doubt you'll ever remove enough buzz from of a piece that's designed to have so much of it. Even with refacing I'm sceptical. Experimenting with temporary baffles in a traditional mouthpiece is probably the quickest way forward.

 

[baribassdan]

Have you tried bari reeds on the Jody Jazz piece? I recently met with Mike Labombard, a Jody Jazz rep, on tour to try out some tenor pieces. He didn't have any bass pieces on hand, but I asked him some questions about it anyway. He said their bass piece was designed to take bari reeds, and that some customers were even using it on their baritones to achieve a darker sound, as the baffle in the DV bass is actually lower than in the DV bari piece. You should be able to get 1/2 size bari reeds.

 

[MojoBari]

...In an ideal world I would get something like the DV NY but Jody refuses to do any work on this piece...

I just looked at the photos on Jody's site for the bass sax DV. It already looks like a bari sax DV NY baffle to me. In fact, it may be the same mouthpiece or the shank has been made a little longer and/or bored out to fit a bass neck. Has anyone lined up a bass DV next to a bari DV?

 

[Grumps]

The old pickle barrel style mouthpieces will not meet my needs. Any suggestions out there?

You might want to try contacting Ron at RPC (www.saxmpc.com). A while back I was considering having him make a mouthpiece for my old Conn bari using a bass mouthpiece blank he still had lying around. Might be a longshot, but that's what I would do in your situation.

 

[Jsharp]

Tons of great advice here. So I tried a 3 1/4 Leger bass reed and it is definitely closer to my sound concept. More work though but I am happier with the sound so I will work with that for a while.

Bari reeds seem to lack something that the bass reeds have. The sound is just a little more "expansive" to me where as the baritone reeds sound more like a lower baritone...does that make any sense?

I play an RPC on my bari and when I got this horn, Ron was the first person I contacted to make a bass piece. Alas, I couldn't convince him to do it. Coincidentally I had the opportunity to visit him at his shop this past summer and he made me another fantastic baritone piece though....it was fun seeing his process.

I have tried the Bari DV and the Bass DV on this horn. Unfortunately, I didn't have them at the same time to do a cross comparison but I do know that the Bass DV produced a very similar sound but was considerably more stable.