This is a Warburton A series 8 degree tenor saxophone mouthpiece that I am reviewing today. This tenor saxophone mouthpiece has an 8* tip opening which is about .115. It is silver plated and came with a Rovner light ligature. These are made by Eric Falcon who was kind enough to send me some to review.
I received a few of these last week and have had a lot of fun playing them since then. The “8 degree” in the title refers to the angle of the baffle in the mouthpiece. The 8 degree baffle is the highest. There is also a 12 degree and a 16 degree which I will review later. The higher baffle of this mouthpiece means that it will be a bit brighter and more powerful to blow usually.
Warburton A Series 8 Degree Tenor Sax Mouthpiece
The Warburton 8 degree mouthpiece looks great. The first thing I noticed when I opened up the package was that it was one of the longest tenor mouthpieces I have seen. It is really long. The table itself extends a good amount past the reed. This is a good thing for those of you who are worried about where the mouthpiece sits on the cork. This mouthpiece pushes about 3/4 to the end of the cork on my sax depending on the model I am playing. The 8 degree was about 3/4’s of the way on the cork.
Like I said earlier, it looks great. The baffle, rails, chamber and tip are perfect. The sidewalls of the mouthpiece are straight. The beak of the mouthpiece is probably one of the lowest that I have played in all my years. You can really feel the vibrations through the beak of the mouthpiece, even with a patch on it. I really liked that.
Here is what the Warburton website has to say about this mouthpiece:
“The 8 degree model is aimed at the contemporary player looking for power and projection without sacrificing fullness and the ability to play softly with a beautiful tone. Many Jazz players are surprised at how full the sound is and should try this model in addition to the 12 and 16 degree models.
Highly recommended for players of: R&B, Pop, Smooth Jazz, Gospel, Blues, and Funk.”
When I played the mouthpiece for the first time it had a very focused and brighter sound. It wasn’t overly bright but it was on that side of the spectrum that’s for sure. It was very smooth up and down the range of the horn. You can hear on the sound clip how I’m doing a bunch of fast runs on it. It just seemed like it sounded smooth to me and it was a lot of fun to do those on this mouthpiece. Even though it was brighter to me it had a very full sound to it. It wasn’t thin sounding like some high baffled mouthpieces can be. If you listen to the clips you can hear a certain fuzziness to the edges of the sound. That’s what I heard when I played it.
Warburton A Series 8 Degree Tenor Sax Mouthpiece
At the end of the clip I go into some more standard jazz phrasing (There Is No Greater Love) and you can hear how the mouthpiece sounds in that setting. It does very well in that style also. I think the larger 8* tip open brings the reed away from the baffle enough to balance the brightness and power of the mouthpiece with a nice full almost smoky sound to my ears. If you want to find out more about these great mouthpieces visit the Warburton Website for more info. Let me know what you think below. Thanks, Steve
About Steve
Hi Steve,
I was comparing your Warburton A vs LA and although LA is supposed to be darker sounding (with a larger chamber I suppose) especially with 8 degree baffle, it sounded as if this one is darker than the LA clip. It could be the fact that your reed on this was harder than the one you used for demonstrating the LA model.
I don’t know if you remember, did you find A was much more focused than the LA?
Arya44,
Yeah, it is probably because if the softer reed on the LA that it doesn’t sound darker. I don’t remember one being more focused than another but it has been a long time. I remember the LA having a huge fat sound!