[Lament]

I am a sax player who started playing clarinet several years ago. I'm looking for my first "real" clarinet mouthpiece. I only play clarinet in big bands and pits and was wondering if anyone had some suggestions. I play morgan mouthpieces on my alto and tenor, love them, and figured I'd look into his clarinet pieces. After looking on junkdude I still don't know what I want. Any insight would be welcome.
Also I picked up a older wooden clarinet at an estate sale. It says Normandy special, 85, and made in france on it. I know little about clarinet brands and was wondering the quality of this instrument. It is in good shape so I don't need to invest any money into it, I only payed five bucks for it, and it outplayed my old student model vito.
Sorry to be long winded and again any insight would be helpful.

 

[hakukani]

There's quite a good discussion of 'doubler' mouthpieces. Just use the 'search' and you'll find them...

 

[CountSpatula]

I'm using a vintage model morgan, works great! Two of my clarinet friends who 1 uses a Premier and the other a Vandoren B45 I think said that it plays a lot easier but its too loud for classical (I only use it for big band anyways). I really enjoy it.

 

[jacobeid]

I just recieved an RM-10 a few weeks ago. I like it a lot.

 

[dirty]

I bet the more closed Morgan symphonic facings would be very nice (by my standards). I personally don't really like very open clarinet mouthpieces and can't stand "jazz" clarinet mouthpieces. Just because they don't work for me doesn't mean they won't work for you, though. I've heard nothing but good things about Morgans, for every horn.

 

[Roger Aldridge]

I'd suggest the RM-10.

To overly simplify things, there are 2 schools of thought to clarinet mouthpieces for jazz or big band playing. One is to use a large tip opening....thinking that one has a lot of power with a more open tip. The other approach is to use a medium-to-smaller tip mouthpiece that's more of a classical clarinet mouthpiece and learn to get a big sound and a good amount of projection with it. With the second approach one can get a "ring" in your sound that, in my experience, projects further in a performance space than with the brute force power of a large tip opening mouthpiece.

In that respect, I'm on the same page as Dirty. I tried larger tip opening clarinet mouthpieces in the past and was never able to get the kind of clarinet sound that I want. Then, when I tried a Kaspar style mouthpiece for the first time it came as a revelation. Finally, I was able to get a dark, thick sound that I love so much on clarinet and have the amount of projection I need in a big band.

The Morgan RM-10 is a great mouthpiece. It has a beautiful quality of sound and excellent projection. It's a good choice as a general-use mouthpiece that you can use for jazz, big band, shows, concert band, classical...etc.

In case you're wondering, the ONLY reason I no longer use Morgan mouthpieces on clarinet is I switched to Legere synthetic reeds a couple of years ago and sadly discovered that I had problems with them on the Morgan facings. I found that I get much better results with Legere on Walter Grabner's clarinet mouthpieces. I'm a huge Morgan fan....it broke my heart. Happily, Legere reeds work fine on my Morgan 6C tenor mouthpiece. Never the less, I hold Morgan clarinet mouthpieces -- especially the RM models -- in very high regard.

Roger

 

[SuperTourist]

I am a very part time doubler, so maybe not the best person to emulate, but I had a standard classical Mitchell Lurie mouthpiece before, and bought a Morgan rm28, which I understand is not a "jazz mouthpiece" despite its openness, but more of a general purpose piece. I find it's wonderful, and the embouchure you use with it is a little closer to a sax embouchure than when I played with my former mouthpiece. I really like the tone I get - it seems very warm and open and projecting.

Isn't Normandy an intermediate model LeBlanc?