Gold-plating has gotten ridiculous with the price of gold but it's a complete rip-off because the plating is so thin it's ridiculous. It's not even one-thousandth of an inch thick; it's measured in millionths of an inch. Now, everyone sends their mouthpieces to Anderson Silver Plating in Elkhart Indiana including JJ Babbit but I called them about a month ago and they quoted me one-hundred and eighteen bucks for a tenor mouthpiece. A COMPLETE rip-off. The amount of gold that goes on a mouthpiece is irrelevant and shouldn't have any impact on the price of the job because when gold is let's say fifty dollars an ounce maybe there is fifty cents worth of gold on the piece. When the price of gold is what it is now maybe there is one dollar worth of gold on the mouthpiece, at the most so it really shouldn't reflect on the cost. They're crooks and all they're doing is taking advantage of the high price of gold. Have it silver-plated for twenty-five bucks which is also a rip-off. I have my own plating machine and plated all my own mouthpieces for over twenty years but I really don't have a big enough tank to do a lot of mouthpieces at once so I send them out now. It would be a good business to get in to right now because everyone thinks that it's expensive to plate a mouthpiece but it's really not. The real cost of plating anything comes from the preparation of the part, not the plating itself. You have to buff it then it has to be PERFECTLY clean and I mean PERFECTLY clean or the plating won't stick. One plater told me a long time ago that he wasn't really in the plating business; he was in the business of selling gold and silver via plating. Yes, that was his job, selling precious metals. Oh, and plating doesn't affect the facing or the dimensions in any way shape or form; it's way too thin. If it did then all of the mouthpieces made today wouldn't play because they're all plated after they're faced so don't worry about that one bit. It's so thin in fact that one time I didn't clean the mouthpiece very well and after I plated it I wiped it off and all the plating came off and you couldn't see one single thing on the rag I used to wipe it dry, not a thing. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Phil Barone
Bobby Dukoff used to use chrome-plating to plate his mouthpieces. It's really great stuff and very durable. Chrome is one of the hardest substances known to man, almost as hard as diamonds so anything you put it on will last a long time. However, you'd better dry it off when you're done because if you don't dry it off it may corrode. If you want your Dukoff to last a long time it's an excellent choice to help it last and last although nickle is better. It will also prevent it from getting damaged if you drop it.
A few years ago, after a recommendation by EZ, I sent out a silver-plated Selmer clarinet mpc to Doc for replating. I think he charged me $45 at the time - including return shipping - and he even re-corked it. I had it back in less than a week.
You can safely plate a Link with the bite plate in; that's how Babbit does them. They cut the slot and the hard rubber plate is glued in and is over sized then it's sanded down and polished then it's plated. I doubt it needs to be refaced either. Why would it? You can polish it as long as whoever is doing it doesn't use very aggressive compound; I do it all the time. Just a little red rouge with clean it up very nicely and not change the tolerances. The last time I spoke to Doc Frazier he said it would be six months before he could do anymore plating and I'd use Brasslab anyway. If you can find someone that uses a acid based solution over a cyanide based solution that's best because an acid based solution is heavier. Phil Barone
Well, to be honest Doc they sure didn't look like they had a heavy deposit to me not did they look silver-plated to me. Phil
No, I haven't heard of acid based silver, just gold. Phil
