Theo Wanne Mantra tenor

Beautiful indeed, but not free of marketing BS:

"The entire interior of the horn and neck has a reticulated finish creating a boundary layer of air. The air-stream is more efficient in the same way a dimpled golf ball travels further than a smooth one."

The air stream actually would be less efficient; however that is not necessarily a negative, in the same way that some people prefer a wooden bodied instrument to a metal one--also less efficient due to the micropores in the wood.
 
kymarto said:
Beautiful indeed, but not free of marketing BS:

"The entire interior of the horn and neck has a reticulated finish creating a boundary layer of air. The air-stream is more efficient in the same way a dimpled golf ball travels further than a smooth one."

The air stream actually would be less efficient; however that is not necessarily a negative, in the same way that some people prefer a wooden bodied instrument to a metal one--also less efficient due to the micropores in the wood.
Click to expand...

In my vintage horns, the interior of the neck is a "dimple" and not smooth. One of the things I noticed that was lost when manufacturers went to water pressured necks and away from "hand hammering" necks, and then Cannonball went to roughing up the interior of the necks.

I experimented with this effect with a sax neck once but can't really recall the final effects other than that I preferred the "rough" neck much more than it was before I roughened it up.

And I concluded if I ever ended up with a more modern horn that I would do this to the neck, but I never had to do anything because my vintage horns (Selmers & Coufs) are perfectly fine the way they are, with a textured pattern inside.
 
One of the other things I noticed is when I had a 1914 Conn alto. The neck opening was opened up a bit. I then (with another sax player) experimented with necks with mpc various opening, and fitted the necks to a specific horn. The horn became a bit more free blowing and more spread in sound from a larger mpc opening a bit.
 
My favorite tenor is an early silver-neck Super 20, and the interior of the neck is super smooth. When we are speaking about roughness, we need to be specific about the scale and how it relates to the air molecules. What IS clear is that you can't relate the dimples of a golf ball to what happens inside a saxophone.
 
kymarto said:
...When we are speaking about roughness, we need to be specific about the scale and how it relates to the air molecules. What IS clear is that you can't relate the dimples of a golf ball to what happens inside a saxophone.
Click to expand...

Too true - golf balls move through the air, and spin. Sound waves are vibrations in the air, here along the length of the instrument, and there's very little air flow through it.
 
If my golf-ball dimpled sax bore ever comes into wide production, I'll cut you a check.

I do wonder how golf ball dimples would affect the sax. You'd have increased surface area, which would imply either a longer horn with a narrower bore or a shorter horn with a fatter bore. I'd assume you'd have to play with tone holes, too.

Hmmm.
 
Okay, I got a sax, and I got a ball-peen hammer.

How do I dimple my sax...from the inside or the outside?
 
A few years ago, Mythbusters did a show on comparing the MPG of a clean car vs. a dirty car vs. one that had golf ball dimples (being whimsical, I present you with this link of the show). The results:

* Clean car: 24mpg
* Dirty car: 26mpg
* Dimpled car: 29mpg (which would probably have been even better if they had a dimpled windshield)

This shows that the dimples have less wind resistance or, for that matter, a golf ball has less drag. It'd be interesting to see what happens in a woodwind: just rough up the interior, if you're not going to do dimples. I'm not saying that it'd make for a better horn, but it should have some effect.

However, to answer TTT's question, from the inside.

:p
 
I don't know about Mythbusters, but here's the physics of golf balls:


"The dimples, paradoxically, do increase drag slightly.  But they also increase "Magnus lift", that peculiar lifting force experienced by rotating bodies travelling through a medium.  Magnus lift is present because a driven golf ball has backspin.  The same Magnus effect can cause a ball to hook or slice if it has sideways spin."

Not much backspin in a sax bore. Drag is increased, meaning less acoustic efficiency, Theo's marketing BS notwithstanding.
 
pete said:
A few years ago, Mythbusters did a show on comparing the MPG of a clean car vs. a dirty car vs. one that had golf ball dimples (being whimsical, I present you with this link of the show). The results:

* Clean car: 24mpg
* Dirty car: 26mpg
* Dimpled car: 29mpg (which would probably have been even better if they had a dimpled windshield)

This shows that the dimples have less wind resistance or, for that matter, a golf ball has less drag. It'd be interesting to see what happens in a woodwind: just rough up the interior, if you're not going to do dimples. I'm not saying that it'd make for a better horn, but it should have some effect.

However, to answer TTT's question, from the inside.

:p
Click to expand...

They also did a dimpled hull years ago in sailing of the America's Cup I think in Australia after we lost it. I think it was outlawed after that.

Maybe the horn has less resistance !!
 
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