Measuring a mouthpiece

It is possible to order on this website your tailored mouthpiece 3D design to fix the for years missing part of an ancient clarinet or try a modern mouthpiece on a old c-melody soprano or other exotic woodwind instrument. This article explains how to measure the relevant parameters of your mouthpiece. For 40 euro you can get the stl file according to the measured parameters that can be send to any 3D printer.

The following parameters are relevant to define a standard mouthpiece for single reed instruments like clarinet and saxophone.

Tools needed to measure a mouthpiece

• a caliper
• plate of glass
• piece of flat paper
• graph paper
• feeler gauges 

Measuring the first general parameters

This is easy to measure. Take care to measure the length along the line of the flat part of the table. 

P_table can be measured with a bevel. Place the mouthpiece with the bottom of the shank against the arm of a bevel. Hold the other arm along the table and fix the screw on the corner.

A suitable bevel can be easily made:

measuring the shank

All the measurements of the shank can be done with a caliper. The value d_shank_mid is measured to define the curve of the saxophone mouthpiece shank.

Measuring table and tip

Measuring of the most tip and table values can be done directly using a caliper. The height of the tip opening and the length of the curve of the tip opening have to be measured using a set of feeler gauges and a flat glass plate. The tip opening itself is difficult to measure. I did it with a stack of feeler gauges but it can also be done with special concave gauges to measure the tip opening.

The radius of the tip can be estimated using the following selfmade circle template or any official one (click here to download the pdf version). Find the cirlce that has the best fit to the tip bow and measure the diameter and divide it by 2 to get the radius.

Measuring the beak

The angle of the beak can be measured with a bevel. If you don't have that it can also be done with a rod and and piece of paper. Place the rod on the top of the beak and hold the flat part of the table in line with the bottom of the paper. Draw lines parallel with the rod on the paper and measure the angel using a protactor. p_beak is the measured angle decreased with the measure p_table.

The measurement of l_beak and h_beak_tip are quite easy. For the measurement of the radius of the angled top of the beak a perpendicular cross-section anywhere on the beak has to be figured. The width of the beak (value A) and the height of the curve (value B) of the beak have to be measured on the same cross-section location. It is difficult to measure, but it is not a highly critical parameter.

The value r_beak can be derived using the mystereous formula: r_beak =0.5*A / sin(2*atan(2*B/A))

 Measuring the window

-----

The figure above shows the measurements needed to define the window.

Measuring the inside