Custom ebony composite mouthpieces for your unique instrument
To say I’m fascinated by unique instruments would be an understatement! It’s easy to forget just how many different variations of the clarinet there are. Not just different sizes, but instruments with different fingering systems and designs. I’ve had quite a few unique instruments come through my shop. While working on unique instruments can be very rewarding, one frustrating aspect of working on rare instruments is trying to find suitable mouthpieces.
A little while back I lucked upon a very rare bass clarinet, a Fritz Wurlitzer made Reform Boehm bass clarinet. This instrument was made even more unique by the fact that it is likely one of the first prototypes of the Reform Boehm bass clarinet, dating to 1942. After some adjustments I managed to get it playing, though I ran into a problem. The supplied mouthpieces featured a very narrow tip and relatively short facing making the instrument feel stuffy and unresponsive regardless of what reed I used. Normally this is not a problem, stock mouthpieces are often not great and it is common to replace them. If you know anything about German bore bass clarinets, however, you know that they use a different mouthpiece from their French bore counterparts. I did happen to have a German bass clarinet mouthpiece at the time, but to my disappointment it was too big to fit. This illustrates a problem with older and unusual instruments in general, mouthpieces are not as standardized as one might hope. As I found out, Wurlitzer had changed their mouthpieces at some point in the past, and any new German bass clarinet mouthpiece would not fit on my instrument. Stuck with an instrument that was essentially obsolete, I was faced with 2 options. One solution was to make a neck for the instrument to accept modern German bass clarinet mouthpieces. I did end up doing this eventually, but that is another story. My first solution was to design my own custom mouthpiece.
From left to right: French bass clarinet mouthpiece, original Fritz Wurlitzer mouthpiece, Bb mouthpiece
The first step was to measure the existing mouthpiece. Believe it or not this step is not strictly necessary. Should you happen to have an instrument that is missing a mouthpiece altogether it is entirely possible to design a mouthpiece based on careful measurement of the bore and interpolation from other more standard mouthpieces. In this case, however, the original mouthpiece provided a great starting point for designing a “blank” to add my own facing to.
The new mouthpiece was then designed in a 3D modeling software. For this mouthpiece I increased the tip opening by about 0.2mm and increased the facing length by a few mm as well. From here the design was 3D printed in plastic and hand faced to ensure smooth and level rails. This mouthpiece was certainly much better than the stock piece, but it got me thinking. For historical or rare instruments most people are not going to be satisfied with a standard plastic 3D printed mouthpiece. While plastic 3D printed pieces can play great, they have a unique appearance that not everyone likes. This set me on a quest to find a more “high end” material that matched the qualities of hard rubber and could be finished to look more like a traditional mouthpiece. Fortunately, I already have quite a bit of experience with the perfect material, an ebony-polymer composite. The idea of mixing wood with some type of polymer for use in clarinets goes back to at least the 1930s (no, the brand you are thinking of did not invent it in the 90s…) While I have used this material and others like it for years, I have never tried to make a mouthpiece from it. The reason is because I was worried about how food safe the finishes I use were. Generally most finishes used on wind instruments are not considered food safe. Fortunately after some research I was able to find a food safe epoxy that would work perfectly as a final protective layer. With this last piece of the puzzle complete, I quickly tested out one of my mouthpiece designs and WOW!
While this mouthpiece does show some of the characteristic artifacts of 3D printing, I was able to finish it to a relatively smooth and hard surface. The result is a custom mouthpiece that looks and preforms similar to a wood mouthpiece but without the risk of cracking or warping. This opens up a world of possibilities. It used to be that getting a custom mouthpiece made for an instrument, especially one with a non-standard mouthpiece size, was a month long process costing many hundreds of dollars. Now it’s possible to make a very high quality mouthpiece in as little as one week for a much more affordable price. I could see this being very useful for instruments such as historical clarinets, where one might not want a traditional 3D printed mouthpiece. If you need a mouthpiece for your unusual instrument, please feel free to reach out.
