Like several of you, I feel you loose more on the low end with short 
facing lengths than you gain on the high end.  High end response can 
be dialed in by just changing the facing curve near the tip or the 
last 1/2 of the facing curve.  The rest of the facing may be left 
long.

But what is the limiting factor on length?  One, the reed.  It gets 
pretty thick back there and will not bend over too long a facing.  
Two, the player's embouchure.  If you do not like to take in a lot of 
mouthpiece, you will either get a leak with a very long facing or you 
will use your embouchure to close off the reed some.  Some of this 
goes on with a "normal" embouchure anyhow, but it can get out of hand 
and cause fatigue.  I think a lot of bari sax players are playing 
extra wide tip openings (sometimes with hard reeds) because their 
embouchure is closing off the tip.  You can get away with this on 
bari more than the smaller saxes.

shmuelyosef
Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 5:06 am on SOTW
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Why is it that facings don't scale with the sax length? An average 
tenor facing is 22-26 mm, but I don't imagine that one could play an 
11 or even a 13mm soprano facing, even though everything else about 
the horn is half the size of the tenor. Same goes for bari and alto, 
which also scale 2:1 (length, bell size, tonehole size, etc. ) 
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Student and classical tenor mouthpieces tend to have  20-22 mm facing 
lengths.  Modern big tenor mouthpieces can go as long as 27 mm (RPCs).

I once did an analysis on what I thought the facing lengths should be 
based on the length of typical reed cuts.  (There is a Reed_FL Excel 
file on the MPWork site.)  It showed that tenor & bari MP FLs were a 
little shorter than what the reed indicated would work and sop sax 
was a little longer.  I think actual mouthpiece facing lengths are 
biased this way since the players chops do not physically scale 
up/down with sax size.

MP chamber volumes are biased this way too.  I think the larger saxes 
are made longer so the MP can be made smaller to fit the player.  
Likewise the smaller saxes are shortened so the MP can be made larger 
than what one would get by just scaling down a larger sax design.  
This gets to be a problem with the tiny saxes.  The Bb Soprillo has 
an octave key vent located on the mouthpiece.

Actually, the facing lengths track well with the square root of 2 (=1.414).
 
Using a tenor sax facing of 22 mm as a starting point,
 
22 mm x 1.414 = 31 mm, a good facing length for bass saxophone.
 
22 mm x 1.414/2 = 15.6 mm, close to the 16 mm seen on many soprano 
saxophone mouthpieces.
 
Perhaps it is because we are not dealing only with length, but areas and 
volumes, too.
 
Paul




Keith Bradbury wrote:

>
> shmuelyosef
> Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 5:06 am on SOTW
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> Why is it that facings don't scale with the sax length? An average
> tenor facing is 22-26 mm, but I don't imagine that one could play an
> 11 or even a 13mm soprano facing, even though everything else about
> the horn is half the size of the tenor. Same goes for bari and alto,
> which also scale 2:1 (length, bell size, tonehole size, etc. )
> <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
>
> Student and classical tenor mouthpieces tend to have  20-22 mm facing
> lengths.  Modern big tenor mouthpieces can go as long as 27 mm (RPCs).
>
> I once did an analysis on what I thought the facing lengths should be
> based on the length of typical reed cuts.  (There is a Reed_FL Excel
> file on the MPWork site.)  It showed that tenor & bari MP FLs were a
> little shorter than what the reed indicated would work and sop sax
> was a little longer.  I think actual mouthpiece facing lengths are
> biased this way since the players chops do not physically scale
> up/down with sax size.
>
> MP chamber volumes are biased this way too.  I think the larger saxes
> are made longer so the MP can be made smaller to fit the player. 
> Likewise the smaller saxes are shortened so the MP can be made larger
> than what one would get by just scaling down a larger sax design. 
> This gets to be a problem with the tiny saxes.  The Bb Soprillo has
> an octave key vent located on the mouthpiece.
>
>
>
>
>
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