| After you & your mouthpiece the crook (neck) has the most influence over the sax’s airstream- and therefore- its sound. Many players recognize this and customize their set up with crooks made from solid silver, bronze, copper....even wood! Depending on taper and material each crook has different characteristics that achieve important, though subtle, effects in tone colour and response. There are a lot of variables involved here- angles, taper, even subtleties of how the neck changes the way the sax mouthpiece enters your mouth all play a part (have a look at the picture of David Sanborn in action, his somewhat eccentric angle of playing must certainly have a bearing on his tone) . All this is before you even get to the material the crook is made of- and then there’s the spiral rifling on the Selmer Booster crook too! When it comes to materials there are a few basic ‘rules’- bronze tends to give fatter lower harmonics (a darker, boom-ier sound) while Silver increases projection and ‘presence’ of sound and copper assists with a big, direct, focused delivery. There are a few areas in which a custom neck can change & enhance your sax- overall tone and bright/dark balance, projection, sound consistency in extreme registers (plus ease of altissimo) & ease of blowing. In short, there is a lot of potential for fine tuning and modifying both the response and sound of your sax…….. |  |
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