Aizen Gold JazzMaster Tenor Saxophone Mouthpiece

This is a new Aizen Gold JazzMaster tenor saxophone mouthpiece that I received in the mail a couple of weeks ago.  It is a 7* tip opening which is a .105.  If you follow my blog regularly, then you will already know that I have reviewed a number of  Aizen hard rubber mouthpieces for the tenor and alto saxophone already.   Since then, Aizen has been a busy company and come out with a few more models.  They now have this gold JazzMaster mouthpiece which is just beautiful.

Aizen Gold JazzMaster Tenor Saxophone Mouthpiece

This is the description from the Aizen website about the Aizen Gold JazzMaster mouthpiece:

“This mouthpiece is designed for realizing the superior breath comfortableness and the legendary smoky saxophone sound.  AIZEN manufactures this mouthpiece by shaping the special vintage alloy using our precise milling technology.  The AIZEN’s technology gives you the powerful, fat, dark, and rich saxophone sound through this mouthpiece.  This mouthpiece is very easy to blow and easy to control from a pianissimo tone to a fortissimo. We can recommend this mouthpiece for both of the beginners and the experts.”

Like all Aizen mouthpieces, the Gold JazzMaster mouthpiece looks great.  The rails and tip look terrific and the chamber and baffle are nice and smooth. The tip is perfectly matched to the Rigotti Gold and Ishimori Woodstone reeds I tried with it.  The engraving looks pretty cool on it also. The chamber and sidewalls are curved and looks as perfect as can be.  It has a slight rollover baffle near the tip but then the baffle descends quickly down to the bottom of a large chamber.  The chamber is slightly larger than the bore of the mouthpiece.  You can see a slight ridge inside the mouthpiece where the bore starts when you look at the pictures below.

As far as sound, you can judge for yourself from this recording.  My first thought, when I played this mouthpiece was “Come to the dark side, Luke” (Star Wars quote).  This mouthpiece plays about as dark as I’ve ventured in my saxophone playing lifetime.  The closest I think I’ve come to this is a Lebayle LRII that I reviewed a couple of years ago. I think this might be a tad darker but it seemed to have a nice sparkle to the sound that I don’t remember the Lebayle having.  The tone of the Aizen JazzMaster is thick and full bodied.  The low end was gorgeous and the high end was full and thick while only getting minimally brighter.

Aizen Gold JazzMaster Tenor Saxophone Mouthpiece

I have to admit that it took me a little time to get used to this mouthpiece.  I think the reason was that on my tenor there are usually certain notes that pop out as brighter than the others.  The second octave E, the high C#, etc…….When I played this mouthpiece I felt like it had an equal effect of “darkening” those notes.  Even though the piece is darker it still feels vibrant and alive to me.  The notes also have a smooth and smokey quality to them that was nice.

This wouldn’t be the mouthpiece I would grab to run out the door to a loud R&B gig but for a night of jazz this would be a great mouthpiece to try.  I rated it slightly less for volume because I felt like I couldn’t push it to my usual “10” on the volume scale.  I could get it to a comfortable 7-8 volume wise.  I am comparing it to other smaller chambered higher baffled mouthpieces so keep that in mind.  Even though the volume might be less than a “paint peeler” type mouthpiece, I think the thick full body of the sound makes up for that fact.

Aizen Gold JazzMaster Tenor Saxophone Mouthpiece

Give a listen to the sound clip below to hear for yourself what these mouthpieces sound like.  If you are ready to “Go over to the darkside”…….visit Aizen’s website  for more information. Thanks again to Aizen for letting me try another great mouthpiece.  Please let me know what you think below in the comments…………….

Here’s the JazzMaster with a 2 1/2 medium Rigotti Gold tenor reed.