I play a Theo Wanne Gaia 1 tenor mouthpiece. It comes with a built-in ligature. It would be true to say that these Theo Wanne ligs are not for everybody. I have tried many other ligatures and have had most success with a Silverstein but not yet found something that ticks all the boxes. I have a Vandoren Optimum that I use on my Meier alto mouthpiece and was very pleasantly surprised with the results when I tried it on the Gaia - the alto lig can be got to fit here - not reliably - but nevertheless the results when it worked were outstanding. So I thought I'd try the tenor version.
Well, the V16 Optimum sounds amazing - it's a revelation. The sound is strong, sweet and with great depth - this is immediately apparent - it's miles ahead of any other lig I've tried. It allows easy tone emission over the full range of the horn right into the altissimo. The tone is remarkably stable too over the whole range, as indeed is intonation - staccato is fluent and subtone is easy. I should also add neither the lig nor the reed will move in the slightest if you need to twist or move the mouthpiece on the neck - for example for tuning or to change playing position from sitting to standing. For all this I could not recommend it highly enough. But ......
...... but ....... there is a real problem - it is slightly too small for the Gaia mouthpiece. In practice I can fit it and take it off without too much trouble - definitely not easily - but it can be done. Worse, it will only fit with one of the three pressure plates and worse still it will not fit with natural cane reeds (I usually use Silverstein ambipoly).
Vandoren, and indeed Thomann, only advertise this ligature as suitable for Vandoren V16 mouthpieces but on many other websites it is said to be suitable for most metal tenor mouthpieces and one reviewer says it works perfectly on his Theo Wanne Gaia. Hence I thought I should take the chance. In the event I decided to keep it - because the sound and feel are so fantastically good.
I wonder would Vandoren consider expanding their range to make ligs for a wider set of mouthpieces? Or adapt the design of this to accept a wider range of metal pieces?
