In the Ernest Ferron book, The Saxophone is My Voice (avail from
www.flutesmith.com), he states that the mouthpiece chamber volume, to
play in tune, is equal to the missing cone section of the end of the
neckpipe.  He goes on to state that a "large chamber" piece is pushed on
farther, a small "chamber piece" is pulled out more... but the volume of
the mouthpiece beyond the end of the neckpipe will be the same.

Well, this is true of the tuning note... but you still have LENGTH to
contend with.  What happens, if your tuning note is correct, a large
chamber mouthpiece that is pushed on very far, will play sharp in the
palm keys in the upper register.  A small chamber mouthpiece that is
pulled out very far will play flat in the palm keys in the upper
register.

I had seen this with our bass sax, a huge cavernous mouthpiece bass
mouthpiece, you had to push past the cork.  Palm keys very sharp.  But
with a suitably modified bari piece (lengthened facing) the palm keys
were very well in tune.  The mouthpiece was in a more normal placement
on the cork.

I had a huge pitch problem with a Selmer S80 on a soprano, yet no
problem with a Runyon Custom.  With another mouthpiece I had the
opposite problem... let me describe, but first a little background:

Before my experience with the bass, and reading the Ferron book...

At first I figured I needed more chamber volume... using a 1/2" bit, I
drilled the bore forward a little toward the tip.  But this made the
mouthpiece flat when placed at it the previous position on the cork.  I
pushed in to get good tuning.  Now the palm keys were even MORE sharp!

So, back to the little soprano experiment.  I used the 1/2" dia drill
bit, and drilled from the bore into the throat, extending the bore up to
the window.  Now the mouthpiece resembled many metal mouthpieces, with
the appearance of a high baffle.  (So, is a baffle really high or is the
bore really big?)

I made some tubes with Delrin rod stock.  I started with 1/2" dia rod
stock, and drilled into it, making sure to center perfectly as I could,
with a 3/8" bit.  3/8" being the approximate dia of the opening into the
neckpipe.

Next I cut various lengths of this tubing, and inserted them into the
mouthpiece, pushing up to the back of the baffle.  Hey!  It is now a
round chamber mouthpiece!  So, by varying the length of tubing, I varied
the "chamber volume" or the ratio of volume to length.

Soon, I found the length that gave both a good tuning pitch AND played
in tune in the palm keys.

Using no tubing, or too short a tubing, gave sharp palm keys.

Using too long tubing gave flat palm keys.

Remember, anything past the end of the mouthpiece IS chamber volume...
even if it is formed as part of the bore.


Paul

kwbradbury wrote:

>  Santy Runyon's mouthpiece pitch exercise is a guideline to obtaining
> an embouchure that minimizes intonation problems on a sax.  You can
> deviate by +/- .25-.5 step in pitch from his guidelines and still
> play well.  I do not think the pitch guidelines are universal enough
> to be usefull in mouthpiece design.  Nor were they meant to be.  You
> can give a great mouthpiece to a bunch of great players and they are
> not all going to obtain the same pitch by playing that mouthpiece
> alone off the horn.  I think they'll be close, but not close enough
> to judge a mouthpiece as good/bad for pitch unless it is WAY off.
>
> So how should you judge chamber size for intonation?  I think after
> you use the pitch exercise to get a good embouchure, test the
> mouthpiece on a good sax.  Tune it so your F1 and F2 are on pitch,
> then try it over the rest of the range without changing your
> embouchure by a lot.  You may need to raise your tongue some for the
> palm key notes, especially on soprano, but you should avoid biting
> them sharp or "yawning" them flat.
>
> Sopranos are very sensitive to chamber size and different players and
> different sopranos will require different chambers.  We live in
> wonderful times that there is such a selection to choose from to help
> minimize our problems.  If your palm keys are sharp, but the rest of
> the sax is playing in tune, try a smaller chamber mouthpiece.  What?
> Smaller chambers make you play sharper!  Sure, but you need to pull
> the mouthpiece out some to compensate and retune it on the sax.  What
> you get is a longer % cone length change on the high notes (short
> cone) compared to the low notes (long cone).  So the net result of
> the move to a smaller chamber is to bring the pitch of the high notes
> closer to the low notes.  For flat palm keys, do the opposite.  This
> will work on all saxes, but the soprano is really picky.
>
> E. Ferron goes into this discussion further in his book with some
> light mathematics.  I can not duplicate all his mouthpiece placement
> results, but his priciples are sound.
>
>
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--
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  http://www.saxontheweb.net

or directly to Paul's articles at:

  http://www.saxontheweb.net/Coats/

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and click Paul's MP3's.

Excuse me, previous post, last line I mean to say ... "anything past the
end of the NECKPIPE is chamber volume... even if it is formed as part of
the bore."

I posted:

> Remember, anything past the end of the mouthpiece IS chamber volume...
> even if it is formed as part of the bore.
>