My former clarinet teacher plays the bass clarinet in the Icelandic Symphony and holy crap when he came with his Buffet Prestige bass clarinet newly upgraded with superpads and a new Grabner Lawrie Bloom mouthpiece. So focused with such great control and the softest ppp sounds directly to the back of a large concert hall. He also commented on who easy it was to find great reeds.
I must admit, I love both LB and Virtuoso bass clarinet mouthpieces. I have had hard time adapting my reeds to Walter's new "high-tech" 3D-printed mpcs though. Which is a shame. Maybe I should give it another try.
It was hard for me to tell the difference from the recorded sample here, but I have both a Grabner mp AND a Vandoren B50, it may just be me, but I find the Grabner to be almost unplayable (for my style). I ADORE my B50 though! But I play with fibracell reeds so that might have something to do with it?
B50 is much more free blowing, especially with a lighter reed. After having had played on the Grabner for a while, it took me some time though to get full control of the B50. I have ended up using both mouthpieces, for now at least, with some preference for B50. Can't comment on synthetic reeds, never used those.
One downside of the Vandoren mouthpieces (this B50 as well as the Eb piccolo B40 I got), is some weird blackening agent in the blank compound, my guess is it's the sulfur. I got dark stains all over my silver-plated parts (mainly ligature and bell) after it sat in the case for a few days. Silver polish helped me get rid of those stains, and now it stopped staining the silver.
My former clarinet teacher plays the bass clarinet in the Icelandic Symphony and holy crap when he came with his Buffet Prestige bass clarinet newly upgraded with superpads and a new Grabner Lawrie Bloom mouthpiece. So focused with such great control and the softest ppp sounds directly to the back of a large concert hall. He also commented on who easy it was to find great reeds.
I must admit, I love both LB and Virtuoso bass clarinet mouthpieces. I have had hard time adapting my reeds to Walter's new "high-tech" 3D-printed mpcs though. Which is a shame. Maybe I should give it another try.
You sound great. I wish you could review the new Dickerson Resonator Ligature for bass clarinet - it's a ligature with a built in resonator wow
It was hard for me to tell the difference from the recorded sample here, but I have both a Grabner mp AND a Vandoren B50, it may just be me, but I find the Grabner to be almost unplayable (for my style). I ADORE my B50 though! But I play with fibracell reeds so that might have something to do with it?
B50 is much more free blowing, especially with a lighter reed. After having had played on the Grabner for a while, it took me some time though to get full control of the B50. I have ended up using both mouthpieces, for now at least, with some preference for B50. Can't comment on synthetic reeds, never used those.
One downside of the Vandoren mouthpieces (this B50 as well as the Eb piccolo B40 I got), is some weird blackening agent in the blank compound, my guess is it's the sulfur. I got dark stains all over my silver-plated parts (mainly ligature and bell) after it sat in the case for a few days. Silver polish helped me get rid of those stains, and now it stopped staining the silver.