Hi guys,
“Fatness” will be different things for different players.
Someone may get a piece with very little baffle and find it to be very fat and open sounding in the palm keys and all over, because there is little baffle to impede the sound for them.
Another player will play that same piece and find that piece incredibly stuffy and not open or fat sounding whatsoever....they will find it dark and dull.
The problem is that we all feel different things when we play, and you can’t break it down by one mouthpiece model or the other, or one specific part of the baffle. All of the design elements work together.
You mention my pieces along with Lamberson and Links etc, and so many players will find many of those different models to be very fat in the palm keys. It really just depends on the player, and what they need in a mouthpiece to get what THEY consider “fat”.
I have a friend who is a great player and he has played on a Dukoff super power chamber metal for over 30 years, and he gets a really fat sound up high in the palm keys. Others will play those pieces and sound very thin and shrill and obnoxious up high. (I’m one of them). 😀
A player who likes almost no baffle so they can fill up the piece, will not find that type of design to give them fatness in the palm keys. If that player who likes almost no baffle, played pieces with more prominent baffles, they would find that the baffles don’t allow them to get the fatness that they want. They will most likely find those SPC pieces to be more very thin sounding and louder sounding, but not “fat” at all.
I think the mistake is throwing the blame at a certain model, because we are all so different and everybody gets something different out of the many designs available. What is “fat” for you, may not be “fat” for another player with the same exact mouthpiece. Also, our opinions of what is “fat”, will differ.
Someone recently told me that they hate Guardala mouthpieces because they are so bright. That’s an interesting comment because the Crescent model and the Super King model couldn’t be further from each other in terms of brightness. I don’t find the crescent or Branford models to be bright. But then again, this is what I am talking about.
Another thing to think about, is that one player looking for fat palm keys may not find a piece fat if it has some brightness up there. They are ltypically ooking for something warmer that doesn’t get brighter. That’s something to definitely take into account.
I know other players that play bright and they feel that they have a fat sound up high in the palm keys even though it’s a bright sound.
Also take into account that making fat palm keys may not be the goal of different mouthpiece makers with different models. Floor height, chamber size and shape, side walls, throat squeeze, compression, etc, all come into play along with the baffle.
The beauty of all of our journeys, is that we need to find pieces that do what we want as players, and we can all feel very different about what we feel and hear from the same models.