NOTICE: Beginning July 10th, 2008, this message board service will no longer be active or available for use.

C Melody Saxophone Forum / C-Tenor (C-Melody) Saxophones / Can I use an alto Eb mouthpiece for a C

Danh Pham User ID: 9760743	Apr 21st 12:27 AM I tried to put on an Alto Eb mouthpiece for my C melody sax and found out that the sound seems clearer than the c melody mouthpiece...Is it Ok if I use it ? Any problems will come out? Thanks for any sugggestions...
Captain Beeflat 2008 User ID: 1738604	Apr 21st 4:19 AM Many accomplished players use Eb alto pieces exclusively...others use Bb tenor mouthpieces. Some insist that the dedicated C Melody mouthpiece is the only way to go. A case of whatever works for you. Remember that for thousands of years there was only one way to approach the high jump...the so called Western Roll...then along came Dave Fosbury.
jazzbug1 2008 User ID: 0735934	Apr 21st 7:17 AM Dahn-- Older style large chamber alto mouthpieces can work well, but watch for an out of tune bottom end. Smaller chamber tenor mouthpieces can work, but in this case, listen for out of tune high notes. Modern C melody mouthpieces are usually the best bet and may be purchased very inexpensively. Good luck to you. Beeflat-- Who is this Dave Fosbury? A baker? I frequently have a Western Roll with my dinner. Has Mr. Fosbury baked something new? What does this have to do with jumping. Certainly, jumping at the dinner table is bad manners, especially in your country, where only polite people live. Jazzbug is puzzled.
alan (uk) '08 User ID: 1278884	Apr 21st 3:12 PM Dahn - perfectly OK to use an alto mouthpiece on a C-Mel, as long as it is in tune - in fact Buescher and Conn sometimes seem better with them than (e.g.) Martin or King which seem to suit tenor mouthpieces more. What is your C-Mel ? Some of the old C-mel mouthpieces were very dull in sound !
Mal-2k8 User ID: 9335603	Apr 23rd 1:42 AM I'm using an Otto Link "Super" Tone Master 8* with my newly arrived Buescher C-mel. I tried a couple alto pieces but they were just dangling at the very end of the neck to be even remotely in tune, and sounded nasty. Of course all my alto pieces on hand are small chamber and/or ultra-wedged, so that may have a little something to do with it. :) Now I have to find a fingering for G4 that works, the "usual" is a quarter tone flat. I also had to make up a fingering for F#4 since it lacks a front F key, but XXX/XXO plus side Bb does the job. I wonder if the fork-Eb is causing problems with altissimo G. I'll have to wedge it shut and see if it makes any difference.
Captain Beeflat 2008 User ID: 1738604	Apr 23rd 2:55 PM Usually the first job is to cork shut the forked Eb. Only a few use it and it is a potential leak point.
alan (uk) '08 User ID: 1731514	Apr 23rd 9:18 PM Mal, if you mean F#3 and G3, these usually work well (from my Q&A page). Last time I tried G4 it removed all the wax from my ears, and the dog still looks worried when I pick up a sax... ============== Alternate altissimo sequence, NOT using front-F F# - first + third fingers of the left hand, first finger of the right hand G - first + third fingers of the left hand, first finger of the right hand, plus side (alt) F# G# - first + third fingers of the left hand, first finger of the right hand, plus side C-nat. Note - for the last two notes, if flat then add side Bb. For 'G' the side of the r.h. 1st finger can open Bb whilst 2nd or 3rd is holding down the alt-F# key . For 'G#' the side of the r.h. 1st finger can open Bb and/or C-nat key(s), whilst tip is still holding down the pearl.
Mal-2k8 User ID: 9335603	Apr 25th 11:13 PM I ended up reversing the spring on the fork-Eb, not because it was out of regulation (it was actually working pretty well) but just because I found the tone of the Eb produced that way to be totally unacceptable. If I don't want to use it, why have to worry about it? As for altissimo, yes I meant F#3 and G3. :) I can reach F4 on this horn, but anything northwards of D4 is like the soothing tones of your average dental drill. Although I found a reasonable F#3, I could not find a G3 that was even remotely in tune. Also I was getting really tired of reaching for a front-F that wasn't there. So I added one. http://mal-2.com/sax/cmel-frontf.jpg Problem solved. The G is still a little bit flat (fingered FOX XOO plus side Bb), but at least it's somewhat salvageable, and the F-F# transition is much easier using the standard F# fingering. (The other one I found still works of course.) I had to finely balance the venting of the palm key -- too little and E is fuzzy and flat, but too much and the G breaks up. Fortunately, there is a happy medium that allows both notes to sound. All the parts that became the front-F were pulled off a busted up Yamaha YTS-21. It's the high Eb palm key with the cup cut off and the rest of the key ground out and bent like mad. The posts are from one of the side keys, since the palm key's posts are attached to a really heavy plate. I know the altissimo sequence for G and G#, that's how it works on my alto. Unfortunately the G produced that way is a quarter tone flat. (G# is OK.) But if I use front F in place of LH1, it pulls the pitch up MOST of the way. I have to lip it the rest of the way. Speaking of G#, I did not like the pearl button G# key, so I've hacked a piece off the YTS-21 once again and transplanted it: http://mal-2.com/sax/cmel-gsharp1.jpg http://mal-2.com/sax/cmel-gsharp2.jpg In the second picture you can see I had to drill a very small hole through the key and the pearl. I tried several times to do it with glue alone, but it kept getting knocked off. Still, I did the vast majority of the hacking on the borrowed key so the C-mel would suffer as little as possible. I would like it if pressing C# also opened G# (I really don't care if B and Bb open G#), but the springing is much too heavy to pull this off. The link I could do (you can see I had a tab soldered onto the back of the enlarged G#, I broke it off deliberately) but the force necessary to keep the pads closed was more than I could overcome. I'll live, I never have become all that reliant upon that linkage.
Mal-2k8 User ID: 9335603	Apr 27th 10:12 AM All right, in an attempt to un-hijack this thread, I offer the following. After much mucking about with mouthpieces, I have found that the one that plays best in tune on my Buescher True-Tone C-melody is... (drum roll please) An alto Selmer S80 C*. (yawn) The one I think SOUNDS the best is the tenor Link Super Tone Master, but unfortunately it has some major issues with going sharp at the octave. All the tenor pieces do -- a Meyer 6M, a Vito Melodia, and the Link. Even big-chambered alto pieces (like the one that came with the horn) exhibit the problem to some extent. I also tried the Lakey 4*3 (which is probably more like a 5*3 now) and the Rousseau JDX8, and they both just sound WRONG on this horn, and have to hang on the very end of the neck to play in tune. So an alto mouthpiece may just be the best fit for your C-melody. It appears to be the case for mine.
alan (uk) '08 User ID: 1278884	Apr 28th 8:18 AM Or look on ebay for some smaller chambered tenor mouthpieces to try, the usual giveaway is that they are slim ebonite... Or live with the slight pitch change between octaves, lipping gets to be automatic after a while !
Mal-2k8 User ID: 9335603	Apr 28th 10:48 PM For some reason, the octave/tenor mpc thing seems to be temperature-sensitive. The hotter it is, the less trouble I seem to have. It's been mid-summer hot the last few days, and aside from C and C#, the octave problem is almost nonexistent. I'm not really positioning the mouthpiece any differently either. Here's something I recorded earlier, more to test the Sennheiser MD-421 for computer recording (it works fine), but also to get a feel for how different the C-mel and tenor sound using the same mouthpiece. Can you tell which is which? http://mal-2.com/sax/My1&only-take1.mp3 http://mal-2.com/sax/My1&only-take2.mp3 OK, it's not much of a mystery the first one is the C-mel and the second is the tenor. But I think the C-mel sounds plenty "tenorish" when it's not directly compared to an actual tenor. Even if they had the same tone, the way the phrase ends would be a dead giveaway because it reveals the location of the octave break.
alan (uk) '08 User ID: 1731514	Apr 29th 5:00 AM Mal - Yes, wierd (not the playing), because the first (C-Mel) sample sounds immediately almost more tenor'ish, with more body/presence. But then you notice the gentle overtones and width on the real tenor. Like when an alto can have more 'presence' in a section, with the right mouthpiece, because it gets 'cutty' when pushed - whereas a tenor gets 'beefy' when pushed. I've always thought of a C-Mel as a 'conveniently C and smaller' tenor, rather than an 'in-betweeny'... Thanks for those samples. And yes, the octave difference does vary even between cold and warmed-up sax.
Mal-2k8 User ID: 9335603	Apr 30th 12:30 AM Actually there is a more plausible explanation for the reduced octave problem, I just forgot I had done it. I had heard (long ago) that putting a little bit of tape, gum, clay, whatever in the end of the neck tenon can lower a sharp upper octave without doing much to the lower octave. Then I proceeded to forget about it for 20 years, until Saturday. I put a duct tape "collar" about 1 cm wide and about 0.6mm thick inside the neck tenon and tried it, and it seemed to help some. Then I went to bed and forgot all about it. Sunday I made the recording, and forgot I had done anything to the horn. It wasn't until after I posted that I took the horn apart to dry the neck and went "oh... THAT was probably why it was different." Heh. I have replaced the duct tape with much more durable aluminum tape. It is also less likely to absorb sound, I would think. It took five, maybe six layers to do what three layers of duct tape did, but it works. It will be staying put unless and until it creates more difficulty than it solves, or it just falls out. It was a nice day today, not miserably hot and muggy, and the octaves stayed mostly in tune. I did some more tweaking (crescent in one hole, crescent removed from another, left hand stack opened about 1 mm), but nothing too major as far as intonation goes. Most of the tweaks were ergonomic again -- more raising of the palm keys and side keys. There are some very nice things about the way this horn was engineered, and some that really annoy me. The fact that each hand's stack is on a single axle is very nice, as it means the keys don't slide against each other from having different pivot points. They move much more as a unit than many modern horns. The annoyance comes from the split bell keys. they make it almost impossible to hold the instrument in my lap comfortably. It seems that unless I hold it just so, and don't move at all, there is some key guard or bell brace digging into my thigh.
Mal-2k8 User ID: 9335603	Apr 30th 11:37 PM New sound clip: http://mal-2.com/sax/stella-take1.mp3 I did this in response to a comment about the last clip, where someone commented that it might sound more distinct and less tenorlike at the bottom end of the horn. I don't think that happened at all. I still think it sounds like a bright tenor.
alan (uk) '08 User ID: 1278884	May 1st 4:20 AM Here's a short sample I recorded years ago, showing how 'tenorish' the low notes could sound. Martin C-Mel, ebonite tenor Link (7) and Rico Royal 3... http://www.cmelodysax.co.uk/saxophones/sounds/43232-bellnotes.mp3
Mal-2k8 User ID: 9335603	May 1st 10:22 PM It sounds like a tenor all right, but why does it sound like you're playing in the loo?