| Bill,
Maybe you miss understood my meaning in the last post. I don’t think I said that a tight backbore is ever a problem, infact if a “tighter than normal “backbore is what you need to make an efficient, balanced set-up work, then a “tighter than normal” or “narrow” backbore (I try to stay away from terms that can be subjective – “tight “means alot of different thing s to alot of different players) backbore is something I would suggest highly that you DO use. Trumpets and mouthpieces are tools to be used to produce a product. Carpenters do have one saw in the truck to build your whole house do they?
Let me further define what “back-pressure “means to me plus the displacement of air
When you play, you displace air that is already naturally in a trumpet (a trumpet is not an air-free vacuumed)... Because it takes a relatively small amount of air to actually play ,say ,a 2 octave C scale and only a certain amount of air will be allowed into trumpet by the smallest mechanical aperture, the throat of the mouthpiece, you will not feel hardly any air come out the bell by your hand. Amount of air past the mouthpiece throat, amount of air that eventually comes out the bell, no m ore no less. Plus you use a lot more air to play lower in the staff than is needed to play up high, because your embouchure aperture is more open in the lower register and quite taught and smaller in the upper register. That’s the air part. If you play with a balloon over the bell, then eventually you will feel a real “back-pressure created by the elasticity of the balloon and closer to the balloon bursting will be the greatest amount of back-pressure. There is no apparatus in a trumpet that will send air backwards.
It would be even clearer with water in the trumpet and the amount of water you pump into the mouthpiece would be the exact same amount that would eventually trickle out the bell.
Quick example: Playing Sensation with “back-pressure” feeling explanation
If I take a Med. bore NY Bach and play a C scale at a PPP volume and easily counter the high resistance of the trumpet built in resistance physically, hardly any “back – pressure” ( again I think the term is a misnomer ) will be felt by the player – Now, if I take the same trumpet and try to blow the walls down at a FFF volume level then I will feel the built-in resistance of the this particular trumpet and because most likely I will not be able to balance or counter this for too long with my body and facial muscles , the narrow tapers, .453 bore and small bell flair and only then I will feel what you may be describing as " back -pressure " . Another scenario is that , when playing this loud as I enter the higher register , My aperture is blown open, my throat closes up to try to counter this and you feel this sensation and blame the “ back-pressure “ on the equipment . Both are caused by the player and not really the equipment.’ The trumpet remains the constant and the player the variable in this little experiment. If you drilled out the throat of the mouthpiece to a 22, let say and changed the equipment resistance variable, then the player also changes what he will do and feel.
Maybe that is clearer to you. Maybe not. I should ask Dave Bacon if he’ll put his 2 cents in on this. He really knows his stuff well and is a much better communicator using the keyboard that I am.
Stuffy vs. tight label ( thighter than normal label )
Also, in my mind, there is quite a difference between a stuffy and a tight trumpet. A ‘tighter than normal” trumpet is built with a high resistance / high efficient ratio to it. Both the Yamaha 6310Z’s and Conn Directors are” tighter than normal “ trumpets (like of lot of student line instruments). Student trumpets are built “tight “(I didn’t say well) because a beginner will need a tighter set-up to help him/her achieve playing success when he or she is still learning the how to breath... A stuffy trumpet is usually a trumpet that is actually to big for the players internal resistance factor and the main point of resistance is farther down the leadpipe so a
Back-up “ feeling occurs. Another reason a trumpet is considered stuffy is that a player uses a certain brand or model that was engineered and built for a certain type playing and playing situation and the player is trying to use it for another type of playing situation i.e.: Large Bore Mt Vernon Bach ( or Monette ) used by a lead player on Maynard band. That would feel stuffy after a while, because physically you wouldn’t be able to overcome what this trumpet( s ) was originally engineered to be.
Maybe all this helps a little more (maybe not)
Larry
PS_ let just say about the pre-internet days - it was alot harder to get on a "mouthpiece safari " or a "trumpet safari " before your were exposed so easily to being " a kid in a trumpet gear candy shop " |