{"id":33271,"date":"2016-10-28T17:08:38","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T21:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/?p=33271"},"modified":"2022-11-17T11:07:44","modified_gmt":"2022-11-17T16:07:44","slug":"johannes-gerber-vintage-alto-mouthpiece-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/johannes-gerber-vintage-alto-mouthpiece-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Johannes Gerber Vintage Alto Mouthpiece Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, I am reviewing another great mouthpiece by Johannes Gerber in South Africa. Mr. Gerber has been making mouthpieces for many years and I reviewed a great tenor saxophone mouthpiece of his a few years ago,\u00a0the Gerber Slant model <\/a>\u00a0as well as the Gerber Solo LC soprano saxophone mouthpiece<\/a>\u00a0 last year. \u00a0 Johannes Gerber has a great reputation amongst sax players as well as craftsman for his excellent work and attention to detail. \u00a0(As well as being one of the best mouthpiece photographers ever!! \u00a0I had to use his photos for the review as mine are lame in comparison………) \u00a0 The mouthpiece being reviewed today is the\u00a0Gerber Vintage Alto saxophone mouthpiece. \u00a0Mr. Gerber was kind enough to send me a free sample to review for you today. \u00a0It has a \u00a06 tip opening.<\/p>\n

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Johannes Gerber Vintage Alto Mouthpiece<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like the other Gerber mouthpieces I have tried over the years, \u00a0this Vintage Alto\u00a0mouthpiece looks great out of the box. \u00a0Just looking at it by eye, everything looks clean, even and perfect. \u00a0The table, rails and tip look even and precise. \u00a0 The baffle has a slight rollover that angles straight down to the chamber and the sidewalls are scooped out smoothly. \u00a0The Gerber Vintage Alto mouthpiece looks to have a medium chamber to my eyes. \u00a0Johannes Gerber does some of the best finishing work in the business and it shows on this mouthpiece. \u00a0Perfect in every way………..<\/p>\n

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Johannes Gerber Vintage Alto Mouthpiece<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have to be honest and say that the Gerber Vintage alto mouthpiece didn’t really work for me at first. \u00a0All I had for alto reeds was one box of Java 2 1\/2 reeds which were way too soft and a bunch of Rigotti Gold reeds of assorted sizes from 2 1\/2 strong\u00a0to 3 medium. \u00a0The problem was that they all felt too soft to me. \u00a0The 3 medium played ok but felt a bit dead to me. \u00a0Luckily, \u00a0earlier this week I was cleaning out my desk and I found a box of forgotten Woodstone 3 1\/2 reeds in a drawer. \u00a0It had 2 unplayed reeds in it and I immediately thought of the Gerber alto mouthpieces I had. \u00a0(I also have a Gerber NY model alto mouthpiece that I will be reviewing within the next day or two also……)<\/p>\n

I wet the Woodstone reed, put it on the Gerber mouthpiece and played……….I was in heaven. \u00a0 It played perfectly for me. \u00a0“I can work with this” I thought. \u00a0 I\u00a0played it for about an hour\u00a0and then recorded the clip below. \u00a0As usual, I tried to get a good range and variety of lines and sounds in the recording so you can get a good feel for what this mouthpiece sounds like for me.<\/p>\n

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Johannes Gerber Vintage Alto Mouthpiece<\/strong><\/p>\n

The recording was made in my new house and although the room is big, I find the recordings in this room to be a bit dry. \u00a0There is no reverb or effects on the dry clip\u00a0at all but many of you have said that is what you prefer to hear so here you go. \u00a0I also added the same clip with a bit of\u00a0reverb added for the other half of you who like \u00a0it with reverb.<\/p>\n

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Johannes Gerber Vintage Alto Mouthpiece<\/strong><\/p>\n

The sound of the Gerber Vintage leans to the brighter side of an alto tone. \u00a0The middle to high register are beautiful sounding in my opinion. \u00a0There is a “singing” “pure”quality to the tone that I love. \u00a0The 2:55-2:58 part of the clip\u00a0has a “Dave Binney” type quality to the tone down low. \u00a0 I’m not sure how to describe it but I was reminded of him when I listened back to the clip. At 3:35 I do my typical routine to see how a piece articulates for me and the Gerber Vintage Alto passed the test. Very clean and smooth articulation.<\/p>\n

The tone when pushed could get very loud and powerful which I think comes out at times in the recording. \u00a0I found the tone unique in that it has a bit of the “hallow” sound in the tone that I noticed in the Gerber soprano piece I reviewed last year. \u00a0Kind of like a \u00a0bit of that Kenny Garrett hallowness if you know what I mean. \u00a0I know this stuff is confusing but those are my impressions.<\/p>\n

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Johannes Gerber Vintage Alto Mouthpiece<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this clip I tried to play similar ideas as I do in the\u00a0Gerber NY Alto Mouthpiece\u00a0review which is to follow this one. \u00a0I did this as much for me as for you because I had a heck of a time figuring out which mouthpiece I liked more. \u00a0I’ll talk more about the qualities of the NY model in that review.<\/p>\n

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Johannes Gerber Vintage Alto Mouthpiece<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you read this review, listen to the clip and want to try the Gerber Vintage Alto\u00a0mouthpiece you can contact Johannes Gerber through his website<\/a>\u00a0or through his facebook page<\/a>. \u00a0I also see him on Ebay selling mouthpieces quite often. \u00a0If you get one please come back and let us all know what you think in the comments section below! \u00a0Thanks again to Johannes Gerber \u00a0for creating such great playing mouthpieces!<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/cdn.neffmusic.com\/2016\/GerberVintageAltoWS1.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Johannes Gerber Vintage Alto Mouthpiece-Dry Recording<\/strong><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/cdn.neffmusic.com\/2016\/GerberVintageAltoWSRev.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Johannes Gerber Vintage Alto Mouthpiece-Reverb<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, I am reviewing another great mouthpiece by Johannes Gerber in South Africa. Mr. Gerber has been making mouthpieces for many years and I reviewed a great tenor saxophone mouthpiece of his a few years ago,\u00a0the Gerber Slant model \u00a0as well as the Gerber Solo LC soprano saxophone mouthpiece\u00a0 last year. \u00a0 Johannes Gerber has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":39718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1124,46,487],"tags":[119,297,427,361,1529],"class_list":{"0":"post-33271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-alto-low-baffle-reviews","8":"category-alto-mouthpieces","9":"category-mouthpiece-reviews","10":"tag-alto-sax","11":"tag-alto-saxophone","12":"tag-johannes-gerber","13":"tag-mouthpiece","14":"tag-vintage-model","15":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}