Hi Johnny, i took the metal plate used in the rovner ligature and placed it in the bell of my alto. if you look at the photo of the ligature, it gives you an idea of what the metal plate looks like in terms of size and shape, so its roughly half the size of a reed. but the difference in sound is amazing. i dont know whether its the plate vibrating in the bell as the same sound frequency of the sound moving through the sax, or if its the sound waves being reflected of the plate around the inside of the bell. Bear in mind a metal plat will vibrate at the same sound frequeny, just like microphones vibrate when they pick up a sound wave, as the sound wave changes in the bell, the plate is still vibrating in a frequency related to the last sound, so smoothing out the change over of frequencies in the sound waves between different notes

I can see your point cavefish, the reason he’s using a plastic reed, is for teaching purposes, put yourself in his shoes, 75% of his lesson is listening to a student play the sax, 20% of his lesson is talking to the student, 5% of his lesson is playing his sax to the student to demonstrate sounds. So in a 30 minute lesson with one student he might only be playing his sax for a few minutes at random intervals in the lesson – so it makes sense to have a plastic reed that plays straight away every time, compared to using a cane reed.

In a Gig situation, its different, he would then move to a cane reed, and just warm up before the gig, that’s his choice. horses for courses.

if you try out a metal plate in your sax, make sure its a bent metal plate, and its roughly the size and shape similar to bottom part of the reed that is fixed to the mouthpiece by the ligature. see the rovner picture, i’m using the metal plate taken out of the ligature.

There is a difference in sound, and the sax sounds far better, regardless of whether you use a plastic reed or cane reed.

two other interesting facts that i’ve read about.

Some people with saxophones that warble on the low c key, got rid of the warble sound by putting a cork in the bell of the sax.

Some Selmars had a similar problem with the low keys, and it was corrected by welding a metal plate inside the bell, apparently the air volume was reduced – previously excessive air volume was slightly opening the low pads causing a warbling sound