Europa With 3 Different Guardala Mouthpieces

[Bill Mecca]

Johnny, did you play the MB I up and octave from the other two?

[john]

Yes I did Bill, just that first time thru.

[William Cingolani]

Hi Johnny
in what key are you playing the Santana music while demonstrating the Europa MB1, and Europa MB11, and Europa fatboy

[Bill Mecca]

pressed for time and only listened to the first couple measures of each. 🙂 they all sounded great. I find I sound like myself on everything I play after a while, and mainly go now for mouth feel and ease of play.

[john]

G minor concert. this on tenor is A minor.
This is the same key that Gato Barbieri recorded it in.
Santana did it in C minor. I played around with it for a bit
but that just doesn’t work as well for tenor cause it starts too high,
and doing it an octave lower wasn’t high enough, so I took Gato’s lead
and decided on G minor too.

[William Cingolani]

Europa: I surely would buy that one.

[Frank Scott]

I would have to choose the Fatboy. Seems to have the sound I like. The M1 just sounded too sharp or cutting to me.

[William Cingolani]

Ya Johnny, as I stated in an E-mail to you, I want the Fatboy.

[Nick]

Continuing to work with the MB2 FB, I discovered that the mpc becomes significantly more “reed-friendly” when securing my ligature in a more forward position; that is, even encroaching on the “shoulder” area of the reed. I accidentally discovered this when using my thumb to quickly secure reed onto the mpc to do a “suck-pop” test. I found that the more forward [towards the reed tip] my thumb temporarily secured the reed, the more likely the reed would pass the test showing a good “Reed-to-mpc-table” seal. I sometimes do this before placing the ligature to see if I might need to do some scraping of the reed’s bottom.

So, I then experimented with 2 of my ligatures [the “Francois Louis Ultimate” and the “Saxxas” ligatures], encroaching the front portion of the respective ligatures slightly onto the reed’s shoulder area. The reeds that otherwise would not play, played nicely. Now to clarify, the securing of the reed is no where near to the vibrating portion of the reed; that is where the reed breaks from the mpc table [facing curve?]. It is well “south” of this area.

I must stress, that because these pieces are hand finished, this phenomenon might be unique to my mouthpiece. But I thought I’d throw this out to potentially help others, and to see if anyone has experienced a similar thing.

[Faustino Fredericks]

Hi Johnny and everyone,

Received my D.G. Fatboy on 3/25 and played with it over the weekend. This is a great M.P., I was able to pop out the low tones no problem but will need to work my altissimo some. On another thread a user referred to the old method (lower lip over bottom teeth) of forming the embouchure, which is the way I do it and have done for years. Johnny advised this user to never do it that way. I then tried Johnny’s video on tone but could not get it to play even after I signed in.
I now want to know what have I been missing by using the “old method”? Any comments?

Embouchurely limited?
Dino

P.S. Johnny thanks for pulling the D.G. Mouthpiece purchases together and doing the reviews. Also thanks for the Headshot, it will go in my gallery of musicians (all of whom I have met personally, you’re the only exception).

[Author]

Posts