Jazz Clarinet Q&A: Mouthpiece Strategy for Selmer Centered Tone

Hi,

Great blog. It's a joy to read. Because of your blog, I have a question. I'm a life long sax player, studied in college, etc. Unfortunately, I never needed to play clarinet. My double was always flute. Anyway, for the past year or so, I've been diving into clarinet. I've always loved it, especially in traditional Jazz and Brazilian choro. I play soprano in a trad jazz group and in a choro group, but I really want to play clarinet as well.  So...

I recently acquired a beautiful Selmer Centered Tone and I'm in love. Can you recommend one, two or a few good mouthpieces that seem to work well with the Centered Tone? It came with a HS* oval mouthpiece which is way more closed than I'm accustomed to, but it definitely sounds good. I know how personal sound and mouthpiece choice are, but some of problems have to do with how open I should go. I know a lot of sax players seem to like open clarinet pieces, but I like to approach the clarinet as its own instrument.

Thanks.

Wayne Swanson

Saxophone, Clarinet, Flute & EWI

www.wayneswanson.net

***

Hey Wayne--

Congrats on the Centered Tone and thanks for the kind words regarding The Jazz Clarinet. As you probably know I'm a CT player myself--I think they're the Mark VI of the clarinet world. 

As to your mouthpiece question, all the usual caveats apply (I'm sure you know them)--the choice is individual; use what works for you; etc., etc. 

Having said this, I think you're smart to ask, because it's quite possible to make a mistake with that HS* oval, which would be a real shame. The obvious advice would be to say "go ahead and have someone open it up", but the trouble is that it's axiomatically easier to take rubber off than add it back on, and you're looking to stabilize your concept right now, first and foremost. 

So, my suggestion would be to do something like this:

Although they're not perfect for a CT bore, you can sometimes get very good results from a contemporary Selmer C85 mouthpiece. If you have the time, money, and inclination, I'd buy, or at least test, a few different facings (105, 115, 120), and see if one of them is more comfortable than the others. You're job might be done there--if a C85 120, for example, works well for you, the search might be over. Be forewarned, though, that while many players like myself have had no trouble with the C85 on a Centered Tone, others have experienced intonation problems--a lot of it comes down to embouchure and air flow concept. 

After experimenting with the C85, and determining which facing is best for your playing, you might want to have the HS* oval opened up to your specs. But I'd make sure you really believed in what you were asking for first--in other words, make sure you know and are comfortable with your playing before having a great vintage piece worked on. That HS* oval is, in my opinion, the equivalent of a vintage Otto Link for a tenor player. If and when you get to that point, let me know and I can offer a suggestion or two regarding who to send it to.

Keep swinging, man!

Eric   

Mouthpiece Review: Selmer HS * Oval (c.1955, refaced by Bradford Behn 2013)

Widely considered among the finest Selmer made, "HS*Oval" mouthpieces from the 1950s are getting more difficult to acquire. For anyone playing a Selmer Centered Tone clarinet, though, it's a good idea to have at least one of these, if only to get an idea of what the horn sounds like with its intended mouthpiece.

Selmer HS* Oval c.1955

I'm not one to insist upon matching vintage 'pieces to vintage horns--my philosophy has always been to use whatever works, even if it strikes others as unorthodox. There are those, for example, who would suggest that a C85 mouthpiece "shouldn't" be used on a large bore horn, as it was designed for the narrow bored 10S clarinet. I don't share this opinion, and have mixed and matched many different eras' equipment successfully over the course of my playing career. Having said this, I think it's a very good idea to get a baseline reading of an instrument by matching equipment, keeping in mind that doing so doesn't produce a magic wand (ultimately it's more important for a jazz musician to find a personal sound--whatever the names and dates on the equipment.)

Hoping to get exactly that sort of baseline, I acquired several vintage Selmer mouthpieces last year, this HS*Oval among them. It was in pretty rough shape when I got it, though not damaged significantly. I sent it off to Bradford Behn for refacing and was deeply impressed with the results.

Brad did a fantastic job, on this and a Benny Goodman model, both of which match well with my 1955 Selmer Centered Tone. Before this, I'd been very happy to play a C85, but after the refacing, everything got easier--volume, depth of sound, richness of tone, and even facility over the break. Everything is just much smoother, with plenty of timbral range, mellowness or bite, and on the HS*Oval in particular, an even stronger chalumeau.

These mouthpieces are getting more difficult to find, and prices are going up. Unfortunately, too, there seem to be some mouthpiece refacers who think they can be marketed as "jazz" models by opening them up to excruciating degrees-which for many of us is tantamount to mangling them. As a jazz clarinetist who uses a relatively close facing (as many jazz clarinetists do) I'm very much against this, and hope that any mouthpiece craftsmen reading will reconsider the practice. Considering the scarcity of these vintage pieces, please do not open them up before finding a player who wants it done! For those looking for a great mouthpiece to match a vintage large bore, I highly recommend this piece.

  

Mouthpiece Review: "Circle BG" The Benny Goodman Signature Model by Selmer (c. 1955)

Benny Goodman Model Mouthpiece by Selmer (c.1955)

The newest addition to The Jazz Clarinet's ever expanding mouthpiece museum is a vintage Benny Goodman Model by Selmer. This piece was a particular treat for me to test drive, as my main horn is a 1955 Selmer Centered Tone, and the BG Signature (or "Circle BG" as it is also known) was undoubtedly intended to match such a clarinet.

There are various internet anecdotes regarding Benny's mouthpieces, some of them purportedly first hand accounts of testing those housed at Yale. As of this writing, I have neither seen nor played those, but the usual story is that they are rather non-descript, very open pieces that play with extremely soft reeds (Vandoren 1.5 is usually mentioned). There are many difficulties with such accounts--or with any mouthpiece reviews, for that matter, including this one. The individual playing the equipment is a profound and decisive factor concerning the 'proper' reed setup, for instance. But when faced with stories of Benny's equipment, many other questions arise, not least of which being when Benny played the mouthpiece in question. Was it the height of his jazz career from 1935-45? Was it during his switch to a double-lip embouchure under the influence of Reginald Kell in the 1950s? Or was it from his long retirement, when he divided his time between concerto performances and reunion shows? Age, repertoire, and venues all have their potential influence.

[Update as of 3/25/14: I recently read another report about Benny's mouthpieces, albeit another internet anecdote suggesting that the late Ralph Morgan measured Benny's facing and found it medium-close. Based on my own experience, I tend to agree with this].  

Beyond these historical questions, the subject of this review wasn't from Benny's equipment bag, but a mouthpiece marketed by Selmer for the general public. As such it was probably not played by Goodman, but designed to give the average clarinetist a mouthpiece that might replicate, in some sense, the Goodman sound.

One of my goals for The Jazz Clarinet is to begin measuring all of the gear presented here and to update these reviews. But even without exact measurements, some unique properties of this piece are obvious on sight. This is now the longest facing of any French mouthpiece in my collection. It's even longer than many of the German pieces I own; closest to a 1951 Fritz Wurlitzer and the newer Vandoren Deutsche models. Also, like the German pieces, the facing is quite close--considerably closer than a Selmer C85 105, and the bore is considerably wider.

Playing it, I got a real jump and boom. This thing is a real bazooka; probably the loudest piece I own. Despite my penchant for medium close mouthpieces, the facing of this was a bit constraining for me, and if I ever intended to use it regularly, I'd have to have it opened up. The altissimo was by far the nicest of the registers, followed by the clarion. Both of these yielded a balanced, round, full sound without the annoying buzz that many clarinet mouthpieces give when pushed. The lower I got, though, the thinner the sound, with the chalumeau being the most challenging. Glissandi, articulation and overall flexibility were very good, considering the facing, but once again it would have to be altered to suit my needs.

I found that taking less mouthpiece in the mouth was helpful, but less comfortable for me personally. In retrospect, this might have been part of the design. I once knew student of Gino Cioffi who insisted on playing with only the very tip of the mouthpiece, and blowing through the horn like a pea-shooter. This was never an approach I liked, but the era in which these mouthpieces were made was also the golden age of Selmer in Cioffi's Boston Symphony section. Perhaps this mouthpiece was designed with that sort of classical pedagogy in mind.  

Overall, this is a fascinating mouthpiece, with real potential for jazz.

[Update 3/25/14: I had this mouthpiece refaced by Bradford Behn several moths ago, and it has become my number one mouthpiece for gigs--without a 'classical' embouchure.]