mouthpieces on vintage sopranos

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I know quite a few of you play modern mouthpieces on vintage sopranos, but I'm hoping someone can help me understand my problem.

With my Selmer Classic metal, the palm keys are very flat.

With a large chamber Buescher, they're much better.

The problem is that I really love the sound of my Selmer mouthpiece, especially on this horn (the tone is great!).

I just got this soprano last week (I've been playing a Ser III, new one is a King Mariguax), and I had to rubberband the upper octave vent shut to get it to play below A, so I could only play half the horn at a time. I didn't notice any tuning issues (was playing the Selmer mouthpiece), but I really didn't hit it that hard.

I took it into the shop and got it back yesterday. The F, D, and side E pads were replaced with much thicker pads: the unchanged Eb pad extends about 1mm beyond the keycup. The new side E pad extends about 1.5mm, the F pad extends 2mm, and the D pad extends 3mm.

Could the thicker pads be playing a part here, or is this just something I have to deal with? Or - could it be something else entirely?

Thanks for any help!

[max]

Interesting developement - I just noticed that the large chamber mouthpieces have the same problem with the palm keys.

It's just that from about E2 and up, it get progressively sharper and sharper until it hits the palm keys - then the half step flatness in the palm keys cancels the sharpness out.

Does this make any more of a case for the pads being too thick? (IOW, not getting far enough away from the tonehole?)

[max]

Okay - time to stop theorizing.

I just took the D palm key off entirely. It didn't make a whole ton of difference.

I did spend about ten minutes playing around with going back and forth between key on/key off. In that ten minutes, I seem to have learned to voice the notes a little better, and now it's hardly a problem.

SO - after all my flailing and hand-wringing, it just turned out to be a matter of getting to know the idiosyncracies of my new horn... sheesh! (sorry :oops: :oops: :oops: )

And... I can't believe I'm about to say this: I really like my soprano sound!

Woo hoo! I'm a new convert to the vintage soprano club! I had my doubts, but now I'm a believer! :D

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(and yes, I'm aware that I've just spent the day talking to myself in this thread... :oops: )