Here are some pictures of the inside of my soprano neck. This is an Antigua Winds SS4290, which comes with a straight and bent neck, both of which have this same shape. As you can see, the end where the mouthpiece fits on is about the diameter of a pencil, and about 1/2 inch into the neck, there's a sharp drop in the bore where it then has the normal conical shape of the saxophone.186Does anyone else's soprano have a step inside the bore? I haven't found any information on why this soprano's neck has such an odd shape.
Is it somehow supposed to improve the sound? My Conn has the same type of step in the bore. It is from 1928 (non-stretch model), and I think this 'bushing' is maybe cylindrical rather than conical. So like a mouthpiece rather than a sax, but quite a bit smaller than the mouthpiece bore.I think my tech was explaining to me why it's there once, but I can't remember what he said.All I know is that it makes swabbing the sax a pain. I can't find a swab big enough to swab the bottom of the sax but small enough to draw through this bushing. So I have to have a swab with an extra cord on it that lets you draw it back out through the bell, the way it went in.I had a Couf soprano that had a huge bore at the mouthpiece end, compared to this Conn.
That horn was also longer than the Conn, and so I assume that it had a lot less taper to its bore.Anyway, I love the sound of this Conn. I would describe it as 'spread'. The bore taper may have something to do with that. But what the bushing does acoustically, I'm not sure. This is the only soprano I own, so I don't have anything to compare it to in terms of tone. I read somewhere that the sound of a soprano sax is influenced more in the neck of the horn than the mouthpiece, whereas it's the opposite with larger saxes. Compared to my alto and tenor, the soprano's mouthpiece chamber is disproportionately short and fat to an extreme degree, partly because of the thickness of this bushed end of the neck, and by the fact that I have to push the mouthpiece all the way to the end of the cork to get it in tune.
Tabella Aperture Sax Soprano Music
Sax Reeds - Dimensions - posted in Viva Woodwind: The reed that came with my new sop sax is a Rico Royal and it exactly fitted the aperture of the mouthpiece. It's just split, but fortunately I had another reed which is a Rillion. However, the Rillion reed is noticeably bigger than the Rico Royal - a bit wider and a lot longer. Morgan Mouthpiece Company For over 35 years, Morgan has created saxophone and clarinet mouthpieces which are designed by some of the most experienced and skilled mouthpiece technicians in the World. How It Came To Be: Morgan Excalibur Tenor Indiana Model. Approaching the Saxophone. The saxophone should hang on the neck strap to your right side, not in the middle. Support the instrument with your right thumb, keeping it away from your body slightly. While sitting the saxophone should rest against the right leg, about half way between the knee and hip.
With an alto or tenor (comparing Yamaha 4C mouthpieces on both), the chamber of the mouthpiece is a bit longer than it is wide, but with the soprano, it looks to be almost twice as wide as it is long. I'm not exactly sure what effect that has on tone, or why the soprano sax is designed to be so out of proportion to the other saxes.I've got the same thing in my Yanagisawa SC991.I've read that the Antigua SS4290 is almost a copy of a Yanagisawa model, so I wouldn't be surprised if our horns are very similar. The cylindrical insert is there to help with tuning. It reduces intonation problems caused by mismatched mouthpiece chamber size.
At least that's my understanding.I understood it was a machined insert that guaranteed that every sax (from a specific manufacturer) had the exact same opening size. The brass tenon and receptacle on the other end of the neck similarly are pieces soldered onto the neck and body tube respectively.Why do these need to be precise? The need for the neck tenon and the receptible to fit without leaks should be obvious. The neck aperture also needs to fit into mouthpieces in a more or less standardized way.I can't remember if it was Benade, Helmholtz or Nederveen, but they talk about needing a narrowed aperture to produce consistent, predictable standing waves in the instrument. The neck aperture is an important part of sax design.Why is there an inner lip?
I think that is just the practicality and economy of construction. Could it be smoothed out? Would it make a difference in sound? Possibly, but probably not significantly. Would it be more expensive to make? Definitely.Techs who deal with these all the time might provide more illumination.