Interview with Phil Rovner: Ligatures, Acoustics, and More.

Phil Rovner, the man behind the world-famous Rovner Ligatures, was kind enough to answer some questions for us. We found the information very interesting and helpful. I hope you all do as well!


Rovner Website


Q. What first got you interested in the design of ligatures? 
A. "What caused my interest in ligatures was a problem I was having learning to play tenor sax after 15 years of jobbing successfully on alto sax, clarinet and flute. I was having difficulty playing the tenor in tune. At my day gig as an engineer, I was working on a project that utilized material similar to what we currently use in our ligatures. I wondered what would happen if the ligature was made of that material instead of metal, and created one similar to our Dark model.It worked. My intonation improved dramatically, and the rest is history."

Q. What is the most enjoyable part of your job? 
A. "My passion is finding ways to further improve our ligatures' performance; it seems there is no end to making a ligature play better, and so it's an ongoing effort."

Q. What is the most difficult part of your job? 
A. "Currently, the toughest part of my job is finding the time to continue experimenting and engineering the latest designs, as so much of my time is involved with administrative, marketing, and keeping the production flowing smoothly."


Q. How much of an impact does a ligature have on the sound? 
A. "Although there are players who claim the ligature has little or no effect on tone and playability, I and many others find  that the ligature greatly influences all aspects of tone, intonation, and playability. A great percentage of our ligature sales are the result of school band directors who insist that a new class of clarinet and saxophone players use our ligatures, as the resultant improvement in the students performance is a significant factor in the school band's overall good sound and intonation."

Q. What are the pros and cons of rigid vs flexible ligatures? 
A. "The performance of a reed is heavily influenced by how much vibration takes place in the heel of the reed. A rigid ligature causes the vibrational energy to be reflected heavily back toward the reed's tip, thus increasing the contribution of the reed's resonance to the overall tone. A flexible ligature allows the energy to flow into the heel of the reed, where it can be dissipated, thus allowing the air column resonances to dominate the tone, and also to minimize the reed's vibration from tending to bias the pitch away from trueness."

Q. What is accomplished by different methods of reed contact? (i.e. the Bonade rails, the Harrison four points, etc.) 
A. "Every difference in a ligature's configuration will have an influence on tone, intonation, and playability, One drawback to ligatures which utilize pressure points is that as the reed is played the pressure points gradually dig into the reed, and the way  the reed plays changes as a result. In our latest generation of ligatures we are finding that supporting the reed along the edges of the heel of the reed elicits the performance that most players seem to prefer; and so we are experiencing an excellent customer response to our latest models."

Q. What part of the ligature affects the sound the most? (i.e. material, thickness, reed contact points, etc.)
A. "The entire ligature is embodied in it's performance. Any change to any part of the ligature will result in a perceptive change in it's performance. For instance, our Turbo Charger Kit, even though it installs on our Legacy and Star Series models on the ligature pins which are on the side of the mouthpiece opposite the reed, it makes the tone decidedly more solid and substantive."

Q. What kinds of things are you experimenting with for your future ligatures? 

A. "We are currently in the process of upgrading our latest generation of ligatures that use "Mass Loaded Technology" with a view towards making the products more cost effective, to make them more accessible to students as well as professional players."