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Tone Booster

13K views 30 replies 15 participants last post by  DTExpress 
#1 ·
Dave and anyone else with experience with this,
I have a silver series III tenor, HR meyer (7) with 2.5 Java reeds. After testing one out, I believe that I want a metal link (size 6). My friend and teacher has advised against it because he said that I have issues with good tone production. He said that it's too easy to "go chasing that magic piece" and not focus on the root issue. By the way, I'm now working through it with "Top Tones for the Saxophone (great book)
How will this tone booster affect my horn and will it give me what I'm looking for?
I am after a free blowing, dark and powerfull sound. Much like the old conns. Then you ask, "Then why did you buy a silver series III??? Simply put, inexperience and an uneducated internet purchase. Though I'm not totally dissatisfied.
Thanks in advance for you input.
 
#2 ·
I don't know what your experience level is, but I tend to believe that the tone booster makes the most difference for the inexperienced players. I may be totally wrong on this, but this is my experience. I ordered a Kessler Custom Alto for my son and they threw in the Tone booster for free. When working through the horn to make sure it played well, etc, I tried it several times with and without the tone booster. I could tell almost no differencel in either sound or playability, so I stuck it in the case and forgot about it. After my son (9 years old) had been playing for a couple months, I noticed it in there and decided to see how it worked for him. At his level, the improvement was dramatic. His intonation improved, the quality of his sound was much better and more focused. Even he could tell a difference, and it was a real motivator to him because he felt better about what he was doing. So, at least in our experience, experience makes a lot of difference.

They are cheap, so it might be worth the risk of a few bucks. One thing to remember, it has to be sized to the neck of the horn. His tone booster was too big for my Unison SG300 so I was not able to try it out on my regular horn. Good luck and God Bless.

Marshall
 
#6 ·
Dave and anybody else here,

I'd like to know more about this tone booster (or buster:) ?) seriously, I believe it can be a great implement for lots of people especially those who play on vintage horns which can be a handful to control with different mouthpieces, perhaps due to reasons which can be cured this way. Did any of you use it on other horns other than the Kesslers they were meant for?

Any improvement? I have a Martin alto and a Selmer Mark VII tenor, any suggestions about this implement to be used in this horns?

Did anybody try to manufacture one himself?
 
#8 ·
milandro said:
still wonder if Dave has any advise abou the use of his tone booster on my horns, I wonder.....
The tone booster is most effective on alto. Whether or not it will do anything poitive for your Martin, there is simply no way to know until it is tried.

On the tenor, the tone booster is not as noticeable a difference. For Mark VII horns, people usually will find that a modern Selmer neck is the better option.
 
#9 ·
Thanks Dave, I'll be giving some thought about sending you my alto neck in order to have this tone booster made, which I understand cannot be bought off the shelf without sending the neck for the correct fitting.
About the M7 I have tried yesterday, just out of curiosity, a M VI neck, can't say that I found it different from mine and in any case not better, in fact I wonder ( asked also somewhere else on the forum) what are the sctual differences if any between the two necks.
 
#12 ·
Hello Dave, could you tell us please, how would the sound of a Yamaha Tenor Saxophone YTS 62 II with Tudel G1. Using the Booster.
There is some video of other Saxophones with and without the booster, to hear the difference?

Thank you!
 
#15 ·
What is this so-called "tone booster"? A link please?

Is it one of those weights that you glue to the neck? ... marketed by one of the greatest conn-men in the world of saxes.
Or the sort that sits out from the bell opening?
Or the clamps that bridge any tenon to provide some sort of better acoustic link?

All snake oil.
 
#17 ·
the tone booster from Kessler was something you built in the neck if I remember well something like the SG neck enhancer?



the LeFReque sold by tenormadness http://www.tenormadness.com/product_...roduct_id=1588 is one of the most talked about gizmos on SOTW.

Nobody has ever made a serious experiment with blindfolding a player conducted by a place of acoustical learning on any of them.

Good source of income for the sellers, no beef.

http://forum.saxontheweb.net/showthread.php?168693-What-the-LefreQue

different stuff but probably the same genesis. Kessler no longer sells them.

 
#18 ·
Yes, it's not clear to me what tone booster we're talking about? Is it the Steve Goodson thing? I've made some similar devices and experimented with the shape. They do effect the sound but it may not be in a desirable fashion.
I first used it on my Martin tenor which had that old fashioned dark sound - maybe what you're after? I wanted something more contemporary and found the neck rings thinned the sound and made it less dark and harsh. It seemed an improvement at first but in the end I decided it was restricting the sound and somewhat detrimental.
The effect is subtle and not what I would call boosting the sound in any way - quite the opposite.

Are you using green Javas? I think they give a warmer sound than the buzzy reds. I prefer Gonzalez which give me an even warmer sound.
 
#19 ·
this is an ancient thread.

At that time Kessler produced an item which was inserted in the neck.

Then they changed the horns they sold and sold this no longer.

So this thread is about something that ceased to be sold years ago and is most probably forgotten in someone’s drawer.
 
#20 ·
Something inside the bore would have an effect, but attachments outside the instrument would be as effective as changing to a different colour shirt. If there is a believers' society, it is equivalent to a flat earth society. And you can't argue with a belief.

Personally I hold little respect for anybody selling this sort of stuff, because they prey upon on buyers' gullibility. One has to ask, in what other ways is the seller doing that to their customers. And if it is from ignorance, then... hmmm.

Again, this comes to mind:
 
#21 ·
These neck rings introduce a tapered channel so the transition from mouthpiece chamber to neck aperture is smoother - in theory. In the same DVD Steve Goodson describes the attachment as having a Bernoulli effect (which I'm not sure is correct as that works with fluid and sax has air stream), and he goes on to say (and I'm paraphrasing here) that this thing covers up poor technique of the player. If they support the air stream properly and practise long tones then you don't need a neck enhancer.

There are instruments that have a fitted ring with the edge chamfered in, particularly soprano necks. On tenors I found the neck ring to be more of a hindrance to good tone and it becomes a problem with differing mouthpiece chambers that the ring gets stuck in the mouthpiece.
Steve Goodson's version is larger than the ones I made so I imagine the diameter must be narrower to avoid getting stuck. This then necessitates an 'o' ring. The gap must then be much larger than in my version so the air stream that is supposed to be streamlined to flow to the neck then has to negotiate moving around a new blockage.

The DVD is from a lecture that Goodson gives to music workshops/ stores to enhance their profits. He says a neck enhancer is a device to extract money from a sax player. They seem to work nicely though he's lowered the price, I think.

It seems a growing trend to indulge in producing gizmos that supposedly alter the sound of an instrument. A neck enhancer at least does change the sound. I'm still waiting for the irrefutable evidence Meridian Winds said they'd produce for the weight they screw to the bell to body brace.
 
#24 ·
True. But as far as saxophones are concerned the only question is, does this implement do anything to positively influence the sound?

Since Kessler discontinued the sales of this object. Maybe they did so thinking that it did little to nothing to the sound.

Apparently they simply applied a Venturi duct to a saxophone, which works as a air flow accelerator.

This certainly (if well designed) accelerate the air flow in but does this matter?

A similar implement which is still in production has failed and keeps on failing to impress

Discussed here

http://forum.saxontheweb.net/showthread.php?150386-Sax-Gourmet-Neck-Enhancer
 
#27 ·
'Tone Booster' is the correct term for so-called 'resonators', or sound reflectors installed on pads to prevent the pad leather from absorbing the sound, so anyone using that term to describe some other part of a sax would, right off the bat, be causing tremendous confusion. Selmer has been using 'Booster necks' for some time now and they have become a legitimate option. The 'Booster neck' consists of shallow grooves inside the neck tenon that have some effect on the acoustics of the instrument.

ETA: there is no 'high-speed' air in a sax, particularly past the tip of the mouthpiece, so no 'air acceleration' device would have any effect. The 'Booster neck', like various mouthpiece internal shapes, affects acoustics. This is why it is also best to never polish the inside of a mouthpiece, neck or sax body tube. Anybody wanting to make their own 'Booster neck' could take a stiff wire brush that will fit inside the tenon and the lower part of the neck and scratch it up.
 
#29 ·
... ETA: there is no 'high-speed' air in a sax, particularly past the tip of the mouthpiece,.
I beg to differ.
You are correct in that the flow of the air through the sax is very slow.

But near pressure nodes, eg the first open tone hole, the air is vibrating very rapidly in and out of the sax, at a frequency equal to that of the pitch of the note played. That is why it is called a displacement antinode. Without this happening the standing wave in the sax would never produce a traveling wave that gets from the sax to your ears.

And of course this is why chamfering the bottom and possibly the top of the smaller tone holes (relative to bore) of instruments like oboe and clarinet, makes such a difference to tone and response. It allows this high speed oscillating air to more readily round the bend and go up and down the tone hole, with less of the turbulence that would slow it down.
 
#28 ·
Further to that, there has been much made of "smoothing the air path" as if there were high speed air flow down the horn and as if pressure drops due to steps/discontinuities in the bore were a problem. However, there is not high speed air flow. The behavior to be considered is the behavior of a standing wave in a tapered bore, which is complex when the bore is plain and enormously complex when you add some 180 degree bends and 20 something tone holes some of which are closed off with pads and some of which are open.

I for one am not convinced that (for example) it's necessarily the right thing to do, to smooth out the step where the MP joins the neck. There should be some reflections of the standing wave off that step. How do those affect the resulting sound? How about the reflections off all the walls of the tone holes on down the bore, or the reflections off the very tight 180 degree bend at the bottom of the horn? The answer is, WE JUST DON"T KNOW.

But using the false analogy of high speed flow of gas to try to infer the behavior of a standing wave in a conical tube is like talking about how many touchdowns the Red Sox scored last night.
 
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