This is a new 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 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 NY Jazz tenor mouthpiece.
NY Jazz
If you look at the picture of the 3 mouthpieces above, the NY Jazz tenor mouthpiece is the mouthpiece on the right without the gold band. The beak has a lower profile to it than the Son of Slant mouthpiece that I reviewed. The body of the mouthpiece is also a bit narrower and is similar to the size of his Ceramic mouthpieces. This mouthpiece seems to have a slightly higher baffle and smaller chamber than the Son of Slant mouthpiece.
To be honest, this was my favorite to play of the three mouthpieces. It just played effortlessly for me and if I blew harder it was very easy to take it into a loud, brighter R@B type sound. I like being able to do that on a gig. I decided to play a little of “My One and Only Love” for all 3 mouthpiece clips so you can compare the sounds of each. You can hear that it is quite a bit bright than the “Son of Slant” clip. I found it to be easier for me to bend the notes and express myself on this mouthpiece. I really felt more comfortable on the lower beak profile of this mouthpiece. I think if I could play it longer I have a feeling this piece would smoke on a gig! Great job Aaron on another great mouthpiece. Visit www.DrakeMouthpieces.com for more details and to order a NY Jazz to try for yourself.
Audio Player
You sound a bit less comfortable on this piece (NY Jazz) than you do on the Jazz and the tone seems a little tubby around 2nd octave E-F#. I like you on the Vintage Jazz best, but the Son Of Slant has a distinctly different sound which I think would suit modern styles better, and you sound really good on that one too. Thanks for putting these up!
It’s so nice to hear a good recording of a good player to be able to hear what these mouthpieces can do!
Hey Steve,
Hate to bomb you with questions, but with this huge Resin hype on handcrafted pieces (Klum, MouthpieceCafe,Reilly, and now Drake) do you notice a real difference between the resin and HR?
I’m not sure I notice a huge difference but I do really like something about the material of certain mouthpieces like my Lambersons, Aizen and now those Drakes. I haven’t tried a Klum yet but would like to someday.
I saw that the Mouthpiece Cafe makes their pieces in BOTH resin and HR. I think they said on the website that about 70% of the players who tried one at their show in NY preferred the HR. They felt that the HR absorbed a bit of the higher harmonics in the tone and darkened it a bit…
I haven’t tried them yet…
What I’m afraid is the whole placebo sort of thing. Hard Rubber has been the choice of players for a long time so one might expect HR to be better. These vintage Resins are fairly new.
Its like those test where they put the cheap medication in the bottle with an expensive label, and the expensive meds in a bottle with a cheap label, and people ended up liking the cheap meds because they saw it was in an expensive bottle.
This is actually a form of hypnosis. Hypnosis isn’t magic, its a suggestion. When the professional “acupuncturist” says that it won’t hurt and it never hurts, you believe them and then you feel nothing. When you know it should hurt, it will. This is why acupuncture hurts me but not others often.
Hi Steve Thank you for the review I bought the NY after listening closely to all 3 of them, it was great to.listen to be able to listen to them side by side same tune. What ligature did you use for it please? I’m like the sound of this piece, it’s full and still a lot of definition, I don’t think like the double ring ligature it way too unstable and it costs a star to an otherwise great and slender construction
I can’t remember which ligature I used. I usually say on the recording of the mouthpiece but I might have done this review before I started doing that. Steve
I’m not sure about what went wrong? I did rate all the aspects of the Drake NYJT mouthpiece
Great sound and playing? I’ve recently purchased a Drake tenor NY jazz mpc and I think it’s amazing. I have the son of Slant in the same size and that too is awesome, massive sound, great dynamically, but seemed a bit hollow sounding when it came to playing R&B, rock’n’roll, and funk gigs, I will use the SOS when the time is right though.
I’m pretty precious about my sound and wanted something that’d allow me to preserve the warmth but’d give me more core sound and a bit more bite, the NY Jazz ticks all the boxes, and for me, it’s actually easier to play, I’ve found the top end and altissimo of the horn to sound more controlled and fatter too.
I’ve never got on with the higher baffle pieces like the Guardalas or the later Dukoffs, I used to love playing metal Otto Link on tenor. The NY Jazz tenor is like playing the best metal link you could imagine but it’s ebonite, or vintage resin, or whatever they call it these days? I love Dexter Gordon’s sound and I found the NY jazz tenor to be in that area sonically when I attempted a few transcriptions on YouTube earlier today.
My first Drake mouthpiece was the Baritone contemporary rollover – I’m set for life with that, in my mind there’s nothing better, then I went to the NY jazz on alto – I can’t see that I’m gonna change that as it’s awesome, when I do recordings with right mics the EQ needed is minimal, I played modern Meyers before that. I’m now looking to sort a new soprano mpc, cough? It’s pretty mad going with one manufacturer for all my horns but I think Aaron is a genius, my sound is now really consistent throughout the saxophone family.