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What is Custom Work ... and
When is it Right for You?
At one of the very first lectures I ever gave, I happened to mention in passing somewhere along the way, that customizing a mouthpiece can be a very good choice for certain players at certain times. After the lecture, I was approached by a gentleman who played in the local symphony of a fairly large U.S. city. He asked in all sincerity, but with a look of incredulity and wonderment, "What is customizing? What can you do to a mouthpiece?" I was completely taken aback. Having grown up in a town where having alterations done to a mouthpiece was fully the equivalent of indulging in a weekly lotto game, I was fairly shocked to learn that there were those who had no familiarity with the process. For those players, and for the many players who are always looking for more information, here is a quick primer on what can be done to alter a mouthpiece and why someone would want to do it.
Custom work can be defined as manipulating the various elements of a
mouthpiece to specifically fit the needs of a particular player. At Stork
Custom Mouthpieces it means that John Stork will be putting his hand to
metal just for you! John's high degree of skill level and artistry in doing
custom work is John is gifted with great "hands" and "eyes". He is a craftsman in the truest sense. He learned the art of mouthpiece making before the advent of CNC equipment. His reputation is based on his innate abilities for accuracy and for adding that extra dimension that no machine can compete with. That human element of the intangible. The point where the art transcends the science.
The customization of a mouthpiece can cover a wide range of options. The first category of this type of work is: Alterations: When a mouthpiece is altered, it is possible to...
Altering a mouthpiece in any one of these ways is generally easy enough to do and is therefore, fairly inexpensive. Application: These kind of alterations can work great for players who:
Deepening the cup Enlarging the bore Enlarging the back bore
The only limit to the possibility of these types of alterations is that they are restricted to what can be done when brass is removed. Removing brass makes something get bigger. So, you cannot "alter" a mouthpiece to make the back bore tighter. Similarly, you cannot simply or easily alter a mouthpiece to make the cup shallower and you can't alter a mouthpiece to make the rim wider. The simplest and most inexpensive way to go about making these changes is to pursue the second category of customizing options... Threading
Threading can be an easy and reasonably inexpensive way to resolve these kinds of issues. However, there are some drawbacks. Most people don't realize that when a part is threaded, part of the original mouthpiece must be destroyed. For example, if you're going to put threads on the rim of a mouthpiece, at least the cup of the mouthpiece gets destroyed in the process. If you're threading the cup of a mouthpiece the rim is destroyed and actually becomes the thread section of the cup. Want just the back bore of a mouthpiece? Then the cup section will be cut away to make the threads. Another drawback to trying to thread a part of one piece to another is that they may just not match!
(The figure below shows a threaded rim with an inner diameter
that is too large for the cup it is being set onto). The final group of possible customization options: Duplications, replications and customized fabrications. These are also the most costly form of custom work because not only are they labor intensive, but they also require a very high degree of skill level on the part of the craftsman. Duplications are just that, an exact copy of a mouthpiece. Why would someone want to have a copy made? Generally, when the mouthpiece is thought of as being "one of a kind," for one reason or another, players will want to secure a duplicate. Perhaps, it's an older stock model that is no longer produced. Maybe it's a new "stock" model that for some reason plays differently than it's sibling counterparts. Maybe, it was a piece altered for someone back in the day. The player no longer knows what was done, they just know it works great for them. There are many instances where teachers will have their students play their model mouthpiece, which is often some hybrid, altered version of some older piece. All of these reasons make custom duplications a flourishing business. Fabrications are somewhat different in that they are more of a 'reproduction' of an antique mouthpiece. In this case, not only do we copy the internal specifications, but we also reproduce the outside shape of the original piece. So that in every way, this is a true copy of the original mouthpiece. In this category mouthpieces such as antique cornet mouthpieces from the civil war era are popular reproduction subjects. We also see Viennese style French horn mouthpieces, which can be very curious in that, rather than having been turned on a lathe, it may have originally been produced by a "rolling" process. These can be quite tricky to reproduce in that they are often far from being round! We also do mouthpieces made completely from silver. These are generally "cast" or poured into a mold and then taken down to completion on the lathe. This is a tricky process because one can encounter the errant "air bubble" right in a crucial part of the blank ("You wanted the inner diameter to be what? or, "The contour of the rim was to supposed to be what right here?") The cost and complexity of getting someone to cast something like this, only to have the whole project go up in smoke is usually enough to keep this type of work isolated to an occasional whim on the part of the braver and more affluent. Also in the fabrication category are the less common types of mouthpieces. For instance, cornetto mouthpieces or natural trumpet mouthpieces dating back to the original trumpet guilds. While most natural trumpet pieces are done in brass, cornetto pieces can be made from anything ranging from various plastics to wood.
We have also made natural trumpet mouthpieces for Don Smithers with
specifications from museum pieces fabricated in mammoth tusk! (Legally
acquired I'd hasten to add). And while this certainly qualifies as the most
exotic fabrication in our history, the horn mouthpiece that we made to fit
a garden hose for Professor Peter Schikele was probably the most out of
the ordinary... well maybe except for the pieces we've made for the
occasional rock star with divots worked into the blank for the placement of
rhinestones!
Summary Customizing can be "the" answer for many players. You'd be surprised how little it can take to make all the difference for some players. I have one friend that reminds me of a tiny alteration I made to his piece right at one of the ITG (International Trumpet Guild) festivals that made, what for him, was a defining and compelling difference in the way that that particular mouthpiece played for him. For most players, we try to have them go through a set of variables that we already have familiarity with in order to try to get as close to final specs as we can inside the confines of our stock mouthpieces (one of the reasons why our stock lines are offered in so many incremental variations) before making the jump to custom work. This serves to keep the costs of endless and aimless experimentation down to a minimum and also helps to keep the burden of production down on the custom man! Someone is always available to go through options with you and we encourage players to call with their ideas and questions. "As Unique to the Individual, as His Own Talent" is not just a catch phrase for us. It's been the cornerstone of our business for the past 20 years. We can help you to explore customizing options which can allow you to express your talents more fully. Let's collaborate!
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what got us started in this business. He had become the
"Mouthpiece Maker to the Stars" while employed at Giardinelli's of New York.
(For an inside look at how John began his career, follow this link:
An
example of this would be a player who wants to use their small inner diameter rim on the cup of a mouthpiece with a much
larger inner diameter. They can't play the larger piece because the
inner diameter is too big for their thin lips, but they love the sound
that the larger mouthpiece gets. It stands to reason that if they thread the
smaller rim to the larger cup, they will have the best of both worlds. The
problem with a situation like this is that when the smaller rim is put onto
the larger cup the edge of the inner rim will "overhang" the cup. There will
be a step of very sharp brass right where the rim was cut off. For some
players this really isn't much of a problem because their lips don't ever go
that deeply into the cup. For most players, this just won't work. Their lip
would be cut to shreds in no time. One solution to this dilemma is to blend
the rim to the cup so that they match smoothly at the meeting point. If
there isn't too great a discrepancy this can be done, but sometimes it's
just not possible. There is just too much of a gap to negotiate without
changing the inner diameter of the rim. The
converse situation can also be problematic. Take the player who normally
plays a large inner diameter. They have full lips that will not respond with
a rim that has a small inner diameter. Their friend loans them a high note
mouthpiece that they can play great on, but only for the first five minutes.
After that their lips swell so much that the sound shuts off. The answer
seems obvious. Have their rim threaded onto the smaller mouthpiece. Here
they have the above situation in reverse. Instead of having the rim over
hang the cup, the cup now juts out past the rim at the point where the two
parts meet. In most cases this is not a workable situation. The
player's thick lips will touch the cup edge and cut. The answer is generally
to cut away the cup until it blends with the rim. The only problem with this
solution is that by the time the cup has been adjusted out to fit the rim,
so much volume has been added that the mouthpiece has been compromised and
no longer plays as easily in the upper register.
