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Warble Study

7K views 29 replies 14 participants last post by  DrRobert 
#1 ·
I am searching for data concerning what causes certain saxophones to "warble" on low notes while others do not. I would like readers of this thread to share the make and model of your saxophone that warbles along with which note or notes this occurs on and what mouthpiece is being used when it takes place.

I am also collecting recordings of warbles to slow down and study the harmonic "footprint" of the warbling note as it is taking place. Any other information such as mouthpiece placement, reed strength, etc would also be helpful as well as any "home remedies" that seem to help.

If there is anyone who plays saxophone and has a degree in physics or has a science or math background and has studied Benade's writings, I would love to discuss my ideas and theories with you to see if I am on the right track.
 
#2 ·
Well, I will be the first:

Conn 10M, 310894. Uncurable warble worst on low D, but could make it happen from low F on down. Carefully confirmed it was not due to:

mouthpiece design or position on the neck
leaks in pads
or leaks at the tenon.

By contrast, I have a Conn 10M 331486 that does not do it, under any circumstances I've encountered. Note that the "good" 10M has a non original, but Conn, neck.
 
#17 ·
I have the same experience. I have a 1940 10M tenor that warbles on low D and low Eb. I can sometimes get it to warble on low E as well. I have had this horn checked by more than one technician and it does not have leaks. I have tried many mouthpieces on it and the mouthpiece does not matter. It goes away if I push way in so I am super sharp but I cannot comfortably play loose enough to be in tune at this position on the cork. It is super frustrating. My 1926 Chu tenor pretty much does not warble but on occasion on low D I can feel the note wanting to become unstable. The Chu is way better than the 10M when it comes to the warble, I basically can ignore it on the Chu. None of my other horns have a warble.
 
#3 ·
Cannonball Big Bell Stone Series.
Any mouthpiece--I have a Rousseau, Selmer, Vandoren, and Meyer.
Warbles on low B, C, and Eb.
Putting something in the bow sometimes helped for a few minutes, but it never lasted.
Pushing in to the point where the instrument was extremely sharp helped somewhat, but didn't cure it.
 
#4 ·
On low notes I usually find it's the mouthpiece not for enough on. I've not found a cork to work, though heard this many times.
Most often I find it is the low Eb opening. Making sure it seals and the spring is strong enough stops it.
It can be caused by leaks elsewhere or sometime weak spring on other keys.
 
#5 ·
My Ref 54 Alto warbles on low C when the mouthpiece is too far out.
 
#8 ·
I can get a few once I'm back from vacation in a week.
 
#9 ·
My 1928 chu berry alto was the worst motorboater in the fleet.

Hints of trouble at low D, and every note below that was a worry, with Bb the worst of all.

After 4 trips to the tech it is now rock solid down low, as good as any ... REALLY good.

A favorite low end player.

It is very difficult to get the neck on --- tech did a lot of work there, along with other stuff I do not recall.

What a relief to get the horn where it should be.

[the old "wine cork dropped down the bell trick" worked pretty well, but for some reason I hate that]

I do not recall that any mpc altered the chug a lug lug lug blug stuff while that was going on.

Blowing really hard and dropping the wine cork in were the work-arounds.
 
#10 ·
My MVI warbled on low C#. When I was getting it appraised at Tenor Madness Randy Jones noted that the C# key did not open far enough. He gave it a tweak and problem gone. I have notice that on my horn if the pads are set to low on the right hand stack or bell the notes can become unstable. I have had to have them set higher twice after repads.
Note : I bought this horn new in 1971.
 
#11 ·
Interestingly enough I have a YAS 23 that has either a low C or D warble. It is six years old and had a total of maybe eight hours on it. I knew the student who purchased it new and after a month quit. So basically it’s a brand new OE Sax. Took it to tech for once over and we had nasty warble down low on his ?? Bench MPC. Will find out what MPC/reed# he uses. We changed one pad, no go! Tossed some junk Mouthpiece cover into it went away. Changed other pad, no go. Grabbed Yamaha 4c MPC from case...no go! #3 reed changed to #2 (from case) bang! That did it👍. Took it home and it all came back. Fix didn’t last an hour. And that’s all matching OE factory gear with the exception of the Reed. Just a cheerful student Yamaha. Haven’t touched it since last August. Just put it back in the case and move on. Due to recent surgery I can’t play for another week. when I can I’ll let you know. Now I’m curious
 
#21 ·
Interestingly enough I have a YAS 23 that has either a low C or D warble. It is six years old and had a total of maybe eight hours on it. I knew the student who purchased it new and after a month quit. So basically it's a brand new OE Sax. Took it to tech for once over and we had nasty warble down low on his ?? Bench MPC. Will find out what MPC/reed# he uses. We changed one pad, no go! Tossed some junk Mouthpiece cover into it went away. Changed other pad, no go. Grabbed Yamaha 4c MPC from case...no go! #3 reed changed to #2 (from case) bang! That did it?. Took it home and it all came back. Fix didn't last an hour. And that's all matching OE factory gear with the exception of the Reed. Just a cheerful student Yamaha. Haven't touched it since last August. Just put it back in the case and move on. Due to recent surgery I can't play for another week. when I can I'll let you know. Now I'm curious
Info from sax tech man. Mouthpiece used at the time was Ted Klum with #3 Vandoren reed. Couldn't remember the exact specs of the mouthpiece. He hasn't used it Lately and we couldn't find it.
 
#13 ·
#16 ·
Yes it works now.
 
#18 ·
Mark VI alto (which I no longer have), serial number in the 144K range. Warbled on low B, occasionally, I'm not sure what caused it. This happened even after a complete overhaul by Emilio Lyon in the summer of 1972. A wine cork in the bow fixed it. I kept a wine cork in the case for this purpose, and used it when necessary. I don't remember if a mouthpiece change fixed it or not - I do know that I used Wagner, Meyer and Link mouthpieces while I had the horn. I sold the horn in 1976, so memories are kinda dim...

I believe that this was common in these instruments. When I sold it, I bought an SBA which does not warble :)
 
#19 ·
I see one reference to the New Wonder Conn tenors above, but would like to know if it's a general consensus that these are less prone to this problem than the 10M?

This is indeed "the 10M's dirty little secret" - how prone they are to having this problem. I believe it's much more so than other makes of tenor.
 
#22 ·
John, having looked at some research, my thinking is that warble would probably be caused by the combination of weakened fundamental + bore inharmonicity, and such a combination can be caused by, for example, a leak.

First look at the impedance chart with and without a register (octave) key used. The octave key weakens the fundamental, of course, and also tunes it upwards. Now, imagine one has a slight leak at the neck tenon or in the upper stack. The effect would be somewhere in between the curves of the chart. And, if the fundamental and 1st overtone become roughly equally strong, AND since they are now not exactly in tune, that would result in an oscillation/beating regime.

Slope Organism Font Rectangle Line


(Chart from:
SAXOPHONE ACOUSTICS: INTRODUCING A COMPENDIUM OF IMPEDANCE AND SOUND SPECTRA
Jer-Ming Chen, John Smith and Joe Wolfe)

In addition, some interesting experiments have been done recently, although with a different way to generate the inharmonicity, see the paper below.

To me, the results seem to provide at least a partial explanation of the warble phenomenon. In a leak-free saxophone, I guess it is rather unlikely that the fundamental is weaker than the overtone. Once the fundamental is weakened, the complete air column of the instrument including mouthpiece volume, mpc placement and reed stiffness will probably play a role in determining whether or not the oscillation is triggered.

Jean-Baptiste Doc, Christophe Vergez. Oscillation regimes produced by an alto saxophone: Influence of the control parameters and the bore inharmonicity. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Acoustical Society of America, 2015, 137 (4), pp.1756. <10.1121/1.4916197>. <hal-01229842>

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01229842/document
 
#24 ·
John, having looked at some research, my thinking is that warble would probably be caused by the combination of weakened fundamental + bore inharmonicity, and such a combination can be caused by, for example, a leak.

<snip>

To me, the results seem to provide at least a partial explanation of the warble phenomenon. In a leak-free saxophone, I guess it is rather unlikely that the fundamental is weaker than the overtone. <snip>
You are assuming that the low note warble is caused by leaks. This is the standard assumption, but there are two problems with that:

1) Some years ago I had a Conn 10M that had a bad warble on most notes below about low F. In testing, I closed every tone hole above the one being tested with duct tape, taped over both octave vents, and taped carefully all around the tenon/receiver joint. With all this the problem remained. It didn't even get better.

2) Of course, in actual practice no saxophone is completely leak-free; certainly not after a few hours have passed since it left the technician's bench. Yet it is anecdotally clear that some models of saxophone have this problem much worse than others. I suppose one could argue that those particular models are also prone to leaks at a location that acts as a vent. Except for item (1) above.

I personally believe that there is something about the bore and tonehole design of certain instruments that makes the lower notes inherently unstable. I further believe the Conn 10M is a particularly bad example of this, based on personal experience and anecdotal reports from a large number of people.
 
#23 ·
Thanks for that link. It will take me a while to read and digest the information. Unfortunately it is true that on the lowest 4 notes of the saxophone the fundamental is the weakest. It does not require any leaks. If I remember correctly it is because being so close to the bell opening the resonance of the lower portion of the tube is not as strong, but I will have to look that up.
 
#25 ·
One thing occurs to me: the poster child for low note warble, the Conn 10M, has (I believe) a larger radius to the bottom bow than other saxophones. It might be interesting to see whether warble correlates with models of saxophone that have a larger radius bottom bow (Keilwerth, Buescher 400, Conn?)
 
#27 ·
Dirk. Thank you for that input and the link to the study. We share the same hypothesis as to the cause of the warble. This is a link to a video presentation I made showing the "battle" of the overtones that are out of tune with one another to take over the "regime of oscillation" as Benade calls it. The warble was created on a C-melody saxophone playing low C. It was recorded and put into slow motion. Snapshots of the spectograph was made at several fractions of a second and then put together like drawings in a cartoon and then sped up to give the motion in time. A stronger fundamental would make them behave and get in line with its own pitch, but being without power it is helpless.

[video]https://vimeo.com/home/myvideos[/video]
 
#30 ·
Well, I have had this problem with a couple of saxes over the years. An Adolphe Sax/Selmer alto motorboated on low C, I took it to Jack FInucane at Boston Sax Shop who replaced the side C spring to increase the tension. It was leaking when the horn was played. Cured.

My Conn Bb soprano 25154, just overhauled at Virtuosity Music in Boston, motorboated on C like crazy. Another player had no trouble. Very diligent study showed no leaks. I even found a way to play the horn with a light in it, placing tin foil in the bow and shining a light in the bell, to show that there was no leak--none--at play. Not on the side keys, not in the palm keys, nowhere.

Putting the mouthpiece waaaaay in and using a large chamber piece helped but did not eliminate the motorboating. So I figured it's an acoustic problem, we have to take energy out of the upper overtones. A piece of wine cork in the bow worked fine but had to be so large as to make low D really flat. So I cut a rectangle of 1/8 inch sheet cork, 1 3/4 x 2 3/4 inches. I stuffed it into the bell and with the C key removed, used a chop stick to push it and position it between the E-flat, C and C# toneholes on the inner aspect of the bore on the left side. This removed as much volume from the bore as the champagne cork fragment had but without obstructing the C key and making D play flat. The tension of the cork sheet holds it in place.

Now I can use any mouthpiece and there is no motorboating. Problem solved.

Another commentator on a similar thread mentioned the work of physicist Arthur Benade and used his analysis to address this issue. I took his storied "Acoustical evolution of woodwind instruments" seminar in Fall 1977, he discussed this trick then. I have used a mouthpiece cap or a champagne cork many a time over the years. This is the first time I have ever fitted a prosthesis, but it looks like a good solution. Took me about 30 minutes, most of it spent putting the C key back on.

View down bell. Bb to top right. Cork at bottom just past C# tone hole

9824


View into bore of body thru C key. Eb is out of view on left at 7:00. Rear Eb is at 9:00. Cork has cracked on its leading edge.

9826


View into C key tone hole (which vents D). Saxophone body to left, bell to right. Cork edges on tone hole.

9827


View into bore of bell through C key's hole. Cork on edge of C# tone hole.

9829


Any of your repair guys who use this trick, please send me a tenner. You're welcome!
Robert Howe, Wilbraham MA
 
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