Zinner Blanks

[bronzZoot]

-What is so special about Zinner Blanks?
-I did a search, and someone mentioned that they create a darker sound?
-Higher quality? How so? Different materials used?

SJT

[Michael Ward]

It's the material I think and the purity of the rubber which has less or no plastics added. My Bass Clarinet piece made by Mike Lomax is on a Zinner blank and it is very high quality. Are the rules regarding Rubber production different in Germany? I don't know although I recall Bob Ackerman saying something to that effect in Saxophone Journal.

[bronzZoot]

Michael,
Was the Bob Ackerman Saxophone Journal article a recent one or from a couple years ago? I have the more recent ones and would like to read it. Last night I tried a Lomax Classic alto saxophone mouthpiece and was very impressed. Thanks for the reply it answered some questions.

Does anyone know the answer to Michael's question, its very interesting:
"Are the rules regarding Rubber production different in Germany?"


SJT

[Hurling Frootmig]

There's a limited number of companies that make commercially available blanks. Zinner is one of the major ones. Babbitt is the other. Riffault used to make nice blanks but their quality has gone down in recent years. There's some others out there as well but they mainly deal with bigger volume customers.

Zinner blanks are made from pretty good rubber. My understanding is that the smokestack laws in Germany are a little more laxed than in the United States which results in being able make a better rubber. I've not researched that statement but have gotten the same story from more than one well known mouthpiece maker who deals with german companies for their product.

Zinner offers a variety of blanks and any decent mouthpiece maker can modify most of the designs to make them more or less dark. I wouldn't say that Zinner's are by nature anymore dark or bright. A lot of it depends on the design of the baffle and what is done with it.

[David Spiegelthal]

It's important to separate the "direct" effect of the mouthpiece material on the sound and response, from the "indirect" effect which I'll define as the ability of the material to accept and maintain a good facing and stable internal dimensions over time and environmental exposure. Bear with me:

In an of itself, it is highly controversial as to whether the material of which a mouthpiece is made has an audible effect on the sound of the total 'instrument/player system' as heard by a listener, ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL (and that's the kicker!). Although I'm somewhat (but not totally) outspoken on this question, I maintain that two or more mouthpieces having IDENTICAL facings and IDENTICAL interior dimensions, but made of different materials, will sound essentially IDENTICAL to impartial listeners in properly-conducted double-blind tests. I have in fact refaced and internally modified mouthpieces made of most current materials, from hard rubber to wood to acrylic and nylon plastics to stainless steel to crystal, to sound either the same as each other, or to fool listeners into thinking they were made of different materials than they were. That said:

When a refacer calls a material "good quality", such as the hard rubber of Zinner blanks, he is mostly praising the material's mechanical and forming properties such as hardness (not too much, not too little), machinability (ability to be cut, ground, filed, sanded, etc. to very precise tolerances without ruining the tools nor taking weeks of hard week to do!), and maybe dimensional stability (once made, the material holds all its dimensions despite temperature and humidity changes, and over time as the material offgasses or is exposed to ultraviolet solar radiation, and to atmospheric contaminants; and the material doesn't warp/shrink/swell as it stabilizes internally over the first few weeks or months of its existence). Another parameter that is considered is resistance to wear, abuse, and mechanical damage --- for example, crystal is wonderful from the standpoint of dimensional stability, but somewhat difficult from the machinability standpoint, and downright poor for resistance to mechanical damage. Stainless steel is wonderful (I feel) in every respect but one: it is very difficult and time-consuming to machine. And this difficulty may well have result in the material's reputation for "sounding bright" or "edgy"! Why? Because it is so much work to apply a careful, precise, balanced facing to stainless, that hardly anyone bothers to! The net result is mouthpieces with poor facings (basically, whatever is easiest to machine on an automated mill) that have little use but playing loud and edgy. This is why (again, my opinion) the vast majority of Bergs, Level-Airs, etc. play like garbage 'as-received' from the factory.

Believe it or not, a good refacer could make a dark-sounding, classical mouthpiece from stainless steel, just as some makers (e.g. Lebayle) are able to make bright, edgy-sounding mouthpieces from a material which most players "intuitively" are convinced is 'dark-sounding' (i.e. wood). I've made excellent classical clarinet mouthpieces (dark-sounding, if you will) out of cheap white plastic blanks as well as composite 'bakelite'-metal blanks (old red Hentons). In both cases it was a lot of work and maybe not worth the effort except as an academic exercise to prove a point --- but the point was demonstrated.

So don't get too hung up over the acoustic effects of a particular material --- keep in mind which is the cart and which is the horse! If a material is easy to work, holds its dimensions, is stable under all conditions, and doesn't ruin the mouthpiece maker or refacer's tools nor break his budget or schedule, then he will consistently make good mouthpieces from that material, and you (the performer) will praise THE MATERIAL for its good sound! On the other hand, a nasty material will not get the best effort from the facer -- and the performer will again ascribe certain acoustical characteristics to the MATERIAL itself, rather than putting the blame on the internal dimensions and facing where it belongs!

End of sermon. I may be totally wrong, but give it some thought.

[Hurling Frootmig]

Dave,

Great post and pretty much on target with my experiences.

[Bill Mecca]

Dave,

Excellent post!

One question, does anyone know if there are governmental/industry regulations as to how much plasticizer/polymer etc, can be mixed in with Hard Rubber before you have to stop calling it Hard Rubber?

[David Spiegelthal]

Bill,
I don't know, but I do know who would know: try asking Dr. Omar Henderson on the www.woodwind.org/clarinet BB, he's a Ph.D. chemist and avid clarinetist and I can almost guarantee he'll give you the answer right away.

[Mike Ruhl]

Bravo, David! Best post I've read on the subject in years.

Bill, I think Ralph Morgan once posted the information you asked about. Don't recall when, or if it was actually in his Saxophone Journal column, but I do specifically recall him talking about it.

[Hurling Frootmig]

According to Ralph Morgan the U.S. government requires that a mouthpiece contain 15% hard rubber to be called hard rubber.

[Bob M]

Dr. Roger McWilliams, a physics professor at UC Irvine, did a test using Dukoff super power chamber D7s made of metal and clear plastic, thus limiting the variables. In otherwords, he chose these mouthpieces because at the time they were commercially available from the same manufacturer and had substantially the same chamber design and dimensions. For structural reasons the outer dimensions of the plastic piece are somewhat larger (i.e. the walls are thicker). His conclusions are summarized as follows:

"...the spectral content of Dukoff metal and plastic tenor saxophone mouthpieces made with mostly identical internal and external dimensions were indistinguishable by microphone measurement or to a listeners ear when long tones were played. In constrast, a Barone mouthpiece with similar external dimensions but different internal baffle could be distinguished easily by measurement and by ear from the Dukoffs...."

For anyone interested in looking at the paper, the URL is as follows:

http://hal9000.ps.uci.edu/Does%20Saxophone%20Mouthpiece%20Material%20Matter. doc.pdf

This paper, I believe, supports David's conclusions articulated above about the impact of material on sound.

[MojoBari]

I agree with Davids post. I would add that I think the ergonomics or "feel" of a mouthpiece is also a big deal to a player but not the listener. SS feels cold and hard. Wood and hard rubber feels warm and softer. This will influence how a player plays a mouthpiece even if the physical design dimensions are the same.

[shmuelyosef]

There's a limited number of companies that make commercially available blanks. Zinner is one of the major ones. Babbitt is the other.

Babbitt markets their blanks as finished mouthpieces...ba-doom

[Michael Ward]

Zoot the SaxJournal/ Ackerman article was March 2003. It's called Mouthpieces: That's What We Crave. Cheers

[bronzZoot]

Michael Ward,

Thank you

SJT