My first introduction to clocking a brass instrument mouthpiece began several decades ago when I was returning home from Willard Elementary School in Moline, Illinois. On the way home I stopped at a local gas station to visit with its owner. That day I happened to be lugging my Olds Recording cornet home with me and as I visited with the proprietor, we were joined by a customer who aggressively questioned, “Hey kid, what are you doing with that horn”. As a grade school youth, I was more than intimidate as I replied, “I’m taking it home to practice” was my shaky response. Eventually my new friend and I visited for some time on the unique possibility that two trumpet players could have met in a gas station and both owned and played the same model of horn. During our visit I learned that this gentleman was indeed a professional trumpet player traveling through Moline on his way to New Orleans to perform. During our conversation, he showed me how to clock my mouthpiece. That was 1950.
Now for the real reason this blog began as a boring yet important history lesson.
Through the years I have been reminded of the practice of mouthpiece clocking and only recently have I been interested enough to research the practice.
My first report on the practice was How To Place Your Mouthpiece In Your Horn – Trumpet Blog (thetrumpetblog.com) October 13, 2016
My second was “Clocking” Your Mouthpiece Part #2 – Trumpet Blog (thetrumpetblog.com) November 17, 2018
My third, Substantiating Evidence That All Trumpet Mouthpieces are Not Equal (or consistent). – Trumpet Blog (thetrumpetblog.com) July 4, 2023
And now my most recent, and next to final post on this subject, Clocking Mouthpieces- A Practice from the Past.
With this article, I feel that I have explored the topic enough to give my conclusion as to how and why Clocking a trumpet mouthpiece works and why clocking a mouthpiece doesn’t work.
Here is my conclusion- “Older mouthpieces were not consistant during fabrication and new mouthpieces tend to be more uniform”.
The word tend is part of the problem. As technology and information increased, so should the consistency in mouthpiece production.
Manufacturing and construction have made great strides since 1950, when the process of “clocking mouthpieces” was practiced. At that time concrete was mixed in wheel barrows at the construction site and consistency depended on the material in each bag, the amount of water used for the mix and the judgement of the person mixing the concrete. Houses were constructed on site by a crew of carpenters and each piece of lumber was hand cut, positioned and nailed by each worker. Contrast those practices now with the methods used to build homes today. Many pre-assembled sections of the new home arrive at the site on a truck, positioned by a crane and attached precisely where a computer had determined its exact location. Concrete slabs arrive premixed and dispensed through a tube from another truck. This illustrates the advancements we have made through the years not only in construction of a home but also the advancements forming a trumpet mouthpiece.
Early mouthpieces began in small one-man shops using the best equipment available at the time and as equipment in constructing a mouthpiece improved, so did the product. As information through observations and closer measurements improved, so did the consistency in the product.
Recently I run a test on identically marked mouthpieces to see which tended to be the “most clockable” and which were the “least clockable”.
Results of my unofficial test-
I compared the two examples of my Schilke 14A4A mouthpieces and found that test subject #1 had no measurable change when clocked. On the other mouthpiece marked the same as the first, I noticed a small amount of change in timbre and resistance when clocked.
I then compared two different Purviance 5*K4 mouthpieces and found that the first when clocked, had a slight change in resistance and tone quality. When I tested the second, I noticed much more change in tone and resistance when clocked.
My Schilke 14A4As were much more recent purchases than the Purviance 5*K4s.
When considering all of the different mouthpieces I have collected, I noticed more change in the older mouthpieces when clocked than the newer mouthpieces.
Be sure to visit our next coverage of the issue of clocking for I have invited ten of the more well known mouthpiece manufactures to share their understanding of the clocking practice.
