Need information please.

[m.marino]

I see you make acrylic mouthpieces.  I've never heard of that before.  What it the benefit of acrylic vs the standard metal mouthpieces?

Sean

Sean,

With the mouth pieces I make (acrylic is the current material I work with for them) I am able to mill a much more directed airflow into the mouth piece so that you don't have wasted air going into pockets and eddy's along the airflow. The current design is based of the Hohner MeisterKlasse design with some improvements by myself.

I am looking at and designing a mouth piece that will have even better air than that has. Since I now have the mill up and am designing the jigs to allow me to get the accuracy and repeatability I will need to make them. Those are being designed with the type of play in mind as well as airflow as TB, pucker, and U channel playing habits all change how the players mouth interact with the instrument (Believe me I have to use all three to be able to tune for clients).

Milling allows me much more precision in finished product than a cast mouth piece does. I will shortly be offering a mouth piece for the 270 series The does away with the need for the back slide cover plate and brings it down to only a 3 piece slide.

I hope the first part answered your question and sorry about getting a bit wordy on the rest but rather happy now that things are progressing well.

Michael.

[Gnarly He Man]

Great news--air loss thru the mouthpiece assemby can be a stopper (not a good choice of words, perhaps!)
Good health to you.
Gary

[Sean]

The improved 270 mouthpiece sounds promising.  I hope something similar is in the works for Seydel Deluxe.  Another inprovement might be to offer a rounded profile mouthpiece for the 270 and Seydel Deluxe.  Something similar to the scx 48 mouthpiece would be very interesting.

[Grizzly]

How about a rounded profile mouthplate for my CBH 2016? Actually, Bonfiglio has modified an existing one for his.

Tom

[A.J.Fedor]

270 with full covers insteadda tabbed and a MeisterKlasse mouthpiece OR a 12 hole, long slot MeisterKlasse.

[m.marino]

How about full wooden covers for the 270 both in the traditional design of even all the way across and also a sloped design as can be seen here: http://www.slidemeister.com/forums/index.php?topic=5417.0. These have been designed and the jigs are being cut.

Got a bit behind due to Murphy and let's leave it there.

Today already finished hand tapping the mounting holes into the bed and now finishing a few pieces of code for jigs and doing a model for a 280 comb so I can make an exact jig for cutting them.

All the requests that you folks have made will be looked at and you might be getting an PM that will let you know what the cost for it will be and IF you are still interested. Seydel Deluxe already has a comb designed and a mouth piece is in the works. Looking for the Hole pattern of the Saxony as need that to finish the comb for it as well.

Michael

[Grizzly]

How about a rounded profile mouthplate for my CBH 2016? Actually, Bonfiglio has modified an existing one for his.

Tom

Actually, a thicker, rounded mouthplate combined with taller, more standard covers (no dividers) might make a CBH 16 that I'd like to play.

Tom

[m.marino]

Well while this is a first cut and there will be changes before they are fully live and ready I thought I would share some pictures of what is starting to come out of all this craziness. For those who understand machinist speak this was cut with a 2mm single flue lapped end mill at 1250mm/min with a depth of cut per pass of .2mm and a set over of .25mm. Some problems with the back side that have been my bane since this project started and seriously looking at getting a motion control card to get rid of these irregular hick ups in step loss.

As you can see it is in the rough form as fresh from the mill and I doubt I will be finishing this one as there is improvements I am looking at (like moving over to a ball nose end mill for the pockets). Hope you folks enjoy and will let you know when I post some video of it cutting up.

I loaded up some pic's don't know if they will load or not. Hope so as can't find an insert photo button and don't know how to move the uploaded jpeg to the insert image section.

Michael

[A.J.Fedor]

Came through just fine! Thanx. Let us know when the videos are ready 

[m.marino]

Have changed cutting strategy so the ridges are gone and wonderful finish on the cut. Now waiting for the motion control card I am being loaned to get rid of a random problem with position loss on the machine that tend to favor the Y axis. Hopefully this will solve the last problem and I can get things cutting and out the door.

Video will be coming as well new pictures with the  much much improved finish with new cutting strategy. I like what I am getting Just need it to be constant and stop loosing position on rapids.

Thanks for the support through all this folks it really has been big help on some of the dark times. Also working on a redesign on the mouth piece as the current designs I have seen currently (excluding the 2016) are not really effective for directing air flow in a clean path.

Well take care and hopefully this week will see things move forward.

Michael

[m.marino]

I  have a few problems with this one but moving in the right direction and close to production level (increase level of finish and get rid of the few other problems and will be right on it. The photo's say the rest. This is as you can see a M260 comb. Hopefully tomorrow I will be finishing up the 270's and Meisterklasse. After that is the new mouth pieces as I have some ideas to improve on the design i did in this last model and also will be cutting the extended Hohner (M268) Mouth pieces. From there on out it is getting stock and everything up and running. Goal is to be able to attend SPAH this year.

Michael.

[A.J.Fedor]

Cute! 

[streetlegal]

I'll be interested to see what you come up with in mouthpiece design. I agree that the holes in the mouthpiece are not as efficient as they could be. In my view these should have a conical shape - tapering from the outside in - to focus the breath toward the centre of the slide aperture - less sideways leakage, making the reeds more responsive.

[chromaticblues]

Mr. Marino are you making any round hole mouthpieces for the 260? I would be very interested in buying a couple. I am interested in any work you are doing regaurding the 260 actually!

[chromaddict]

Ditto on the 260 mouthpiece.

[Tim Atwell]

Dittos regarding the 260 generally.

[Danny G]

My guess is that Mike and his family are either en route to or in Canada visiting family right now.
He's bringing some new products to Spah for me to sell and when he's not out and about enjoying his first Spah convention, he will be available in the store to say hi and answer questions. I'll ask him what he has available or in the works for the 260's and if he doesn't post here and let you know, I will.