Archive for the ‘Tenor Mouthpiece Reviews’ Category

This is a very cherished mouthpiece for me.  It was made by Gary Sugal in the early 90′s and is called the Super Gonz I.  To give you a little background on this mouthpiece…………I started playing tenor around 1986.  At that time, I was playing a Couf Superba 1 tenor with the only mouthpiece I could find.  It was a Brilhart Level Air mouthpiece.  To sum up my experience, I hated my sound with a passion. It was just plain gross.  Bright and blatty sounding.  Even thinking about it now gives me shivers.  My goal at that time was to sound just like Michael Brecker but no matter how much I practiced or how hard I worked on it my sound was lame to my ears. In ’90 I took lessons with Jerry Bergonzi and he sold me a mouthpiece that was a Gary Sugal prototype.  I believe it was called the JB model.   It was a high baffled mouthpiece that I instantly loved.  It had kind of a Dukoff/Guardala vibe to it.  It had a very focused bright sound to it.  You can hear me playing that mouthpiece in the clips marked “fusion” here.

Sugal Super Gonz Copper Tenor Saxophone Mouthpiece

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Here’s another Theo Wanne tenor saxophone mouthpiece for you to check out.  This is a hard rubber version of the Gaia tenor saxophone mouthpiece. The Gaia is said to be a run at the florida link type concept. It has a medium baffle that does indeed remind me of my florida links. The difference hear is in the chamber. The Gaia looks to have a much larger chamber than the florida links I have owned. It looks closer in size to my NY links. This mouthpiece is a .110 tip opening  (8).   I found this to be one of the nicest darker mouthpieces I have tried.  It had a nice fat dark sound that was lush sounding.  The edges of the tone seemed to have a rounded quality to them.  I noticed this with the metal Gaia I tried also.

Theo Wanne Hard Rubber  Gaia Tenor Saxophone Mouthpiece

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Here’s another Theo Wanne tenor saxophone mouthpiece for you to check out. I just received a ton of these and I’m working my way through them as you might have noticed.   This is a wood version of the Gaia tenor saxophone mouthpiece. The Gaia is said to be a run at the florida link type concept.   It has a medium baffle that does indeed remind me of my florida links.  The difference hear is in the chamber. The Gaia looks to have a much larger chamber than the florida links I have owned.  It looks closer in size to my NY links.  This mouthpiece is a .110 tip opening. I was hoping for a .105 tip as that is what I liked the best when I tried the metal Gaia out. This tip feels a little larger than I normally like but it was still easy to play.

Theo Wanne Wood Gaia Tenor Saxophone Mouthpiece

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Here’s another Theo Wanne tenor saxophone mouthpiece for you to check out. I just received a ton of these and I’m working my way through them as you might have noticed. This is a hard rubber version of the Ambika mouthpiece.  The Ambika is on the darker side of the tone spectrum.  It has a lower baffle than the Gaia.  This is a .110 tip opening.  I was hoping for a .105 tip as that is what I liked the best when I tried the metal Gaia out.  This tip  feels a little larger than I normally like……………………….

Theo Wanne  Ambika Tenor Saxophone Mouthpiece

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Here we have a John Thomas tenor saxophone mouthpiece.  I actually played this about a year ago but the recording has been sitting on my computer since.  I totally forgot about it until this morning when I read a thread on “Sax on the Web” asking about  John Thomas and his mouthpiece work.

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Here is my review of a custom hard rubber tenor saxophone mouthpiece that Eric Falcon made.  A friend of mine sent me this to try with 2 metal links as well.  This is an example of a great hard rubber mouthpiece.  I actually have played this mouthpiece for about a week now and love it a lot. (It hasn’t left me horn) It is the type of mouthpiece that sounds great on a laid back jazz gig but also has enough kick to it that you can push it into overdrive and get some nice volume on a funk or rock gig.

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This is another Modern Otto Link Super Tone Master I received to try out.  This one was originally a 7 tip (.100) but was refaced and oped up to a .110 by Eric Falcon.  From what I understand Eric Falcon used to do mouthpiece work for Jody Espina of Jody Jazz.  He now is  refacing mouthpieces and also has his own line of HR mouthpieces that he makes at  Warburton. ( I have an alto,soprano and 2 tenors sitting on my desk right now)

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This is a modern Super Tone Master Otto Link tenor saxophone mouthpiece.   Everyone knows that buying a modern metal Otto Link is pretty much a roll of the dice.  I remember going to a music store and trying 10 of them and not liking any of them.  Many times over the years I have stopped at different  stores just to see what they had for Otto Link mouthpiece and I was almost always disappointed.  Some of them were just horrible to play.  I have had students come in with metal links that had crooked facings, uneven tips, and horribly uneven tables.  Many of these mouthpieces were causing the students to really struggle for months if not years.

The best think you can do for a link like this is send it to get refaced.  There are many great refacers out there.  They measure your mouthpiece to see how it measures up and then fix it so that it plays as well as it can.  This mouthpiece was refaced by Brian Powell who opened it up to a .115 from it’s original .095.  A friend of mine sent it to me to see what I thought of it.

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This is a great mouthpiece from Pete Thomas over in the UK.  I emailed him a few months ago because I was interested in trying one of his tenor mouthpieces.   He was kind enough to send me this one.  I’m not sure what it is made of  but it looks pretty cool.  It’s looks remind me of some of those white rocks you find on the beach sometimes.

I will say up front that this is a mouthpiece that really surprised me.  As soon as I opened the package and looked at it I thought “I’m really not going to like this mouthpiece”.  It has a pretty high and long baffle in it. Usually when I play a tenor mouthpiece with that high a baffle it is incredibly loud, bright and obnoxious.  Sometimes,  I also find them hard to keep in tune.  I kept this mouthpiece sitting on my desk for about a week and just kept looking at it.  I felt a bit scared to try it……………..

PPT Handmade Mouthpiece

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This is a new tenor saxophone mouthpiece I received in the mail last week from Aaron Drake. Drake mouthpieces have been around for a number of years and Aaron is best known for his Ceramic mouthpieces which I have reviewed here before. Recently, he has updated his website www.DrakeMouthpieces.com and come out with a new line of mouthpieces made out of “vintage resin”. Aaron sent me 3 tenor mouthpieces to try:

VRJT – Jazz Tenor (passaround model)
SSJT – Son of Slant (medium chamber)
NYJT – NY Jazz tenor (prototype – unbanded)

This review is of the  Jazz model tenor saxophone mouthpiece.

Jazz Model

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