O-Rings, a Plumber's and Saxophonist's best friend
I'm a fairly inventive second-time around late-blooming more-than-rank-beginner willing to try just about anything if it works, is cheap and is easy to get, so I have been using O-rings as a lig for over a month now for my daily practice sessions, while waiting for my long overdue backordered Rovner light. I tried a velcro cable-tie and rubber bands first but the O-rings are much higher tech and win hands down. I think the sound is better than that of the standard 2 screw metal lig and especailly the one that came with my Kessler alto, given that it came deformed so wouldn't seat the reed correctly and I had to constantly screw with it (literally) which got to be a big waste of practice time. My mpc is the Kessler copy of a Selmer C* (so they claim) that came with the horn, and I use either 3 or even 4 rings depending on how well the reed seals to the piece, plays and sounds. The big decider is how many seconds of suction I get before the pop (I do this with the mpc on the neck). Generally it is about 3 or 4 seconds.
The trick to using O-rings is to wet them slightly with some drops of water on your finger from a glass which allows you to slide, not roll, them down the mpc one by one while holding the reed in place with the other hand. After the first one is on you can still adjust the position of the reed relative to the tip but after that it is impossible to move it. If you don't wet them they roll and then you can't position them where you want to and the bottom one always ends up rolling right off the back of the piece onto the barrel . When I have problems with a reed, I move them up or down the mpc to find the best location to improve the reed's response.
While they do work well, I can't say that O-rings are totally convenient to use because to adjust the reed's position later on or to change reeds you have to roll them all off and do the whole thing over again. I am pretty fast at it now but it still can't compare to just sliding a reed on under the lig and tighting the screw(s). However they do produce a fairly warm tone and good projection and while the sound is not overly bright it certainly isn't muffled. The diameter and thickness of the rings surely enter into the results so I spent a good long time at the hardware store fitting various ones on for size before settling on the ones I use. Ask me if you are interested and I'll post the particulars.
