What makes a lig bright or dark?

I'm playing around with mpc set ups a lot at the moment (welcome back, regular readers!). Workign thru a batch of mpcs with dreadful ligs last week made me want to experiment.

My Lawton has an integral lig, but one which grips the reed very nicely, and has very fine adjustment. I tied putting some padding between lig and reed, and seemed to get more response from the reed, adn a softer, easier to control sound.

Now this could just be me: I must say I'm sceptical. Provided a lig holds the reed firmly, flat to the table, without unintended vibration, and is easy to adjust, what difference can it make to the sound? How can some ligs (made of similar material) sound 'bright' and others 'dark'? Are we just fooling ourselves?

And if not, then in what ways could I modify the lig on Lawton to change the sound? Is adding padding essentially what the lig makers themselves do?

Views welcome!

Nick, your argumentation is totally right. You hit a soft spot here. The answer and main word is FLEXIBILITY. All the reed work is based on is flexing and going back to normal. Vibrating. The easier it vibrates, the easier it is to play, the more we can keep the right pressure on it and the tuning. And it's not only a matter of reed strenght, it's physics.

Metal lig: almost no lig flexibility, therefore reed movement is rigid and precise. Bright. Softer material lig: the ligature flexes along with the reed (a very little amount, of course!) and so allows the reed to flex a little more and to go back to its normal state (an eventually flex in the opposite direction) with a smoother and more elastic (progressive?) movement. Result: easy to the attack, smoother vibrations, smoother tone. Dark? I still have to fully understand this often used definition, but yes, dark. We're talking microns here ... but ...

Let's add an extra pearl: reeds tend to warp, most of the time in a concave way (center of reed raises from the table). Lig with an extra CENTER pressure point (Otto Link, Consoli ...), more chances of the reed laying flat (I mean FLAT) on the table and sound come out easier and more control and horn player happy. Check out a GOOD reed when you take it off the mouthpiece. Is it sticking on the table? See?

Darn, I'm giving away my secrets! Pulcinella's secrets, tho!

Cheers

I must say that I have tried a number of mpcs with a number of different ligs (including string, rubber bands, velcro) and have yet to find what I feel is a significant difference in the response based on the lig. I've even left the lig so loose that the reed was just hanging on. At a certain point it is too loose and won't play reliably, but back from that point I didn't notice much difference.

I know that this is a hot issue, but personally IME I haven't found the lig to make much of a difference

It's not a matter of making the lig loose, but your embouchure. The moment you don't squeeze the reed against the mpc with your lower lip or yor lower teeth, but gently sustain the whole apparatus while you blow in it, the difference appears move evident. Anyways, it works for me. I found it hard to attack notes with standard metal ligatures, went for a BG ligature, kind of leather, softer material, and voilá, attack became easier (I didn't say easy!). But the reed should always be firmly held towards the table, or it might move sideways too. My 2 cents