Brilhart Hard Rubber Tenor Saxophone Mouthpiece, Great Neck, "Designed By" Model
1940's "Designed By" hard rubber tenor saxophone mouthpiece. These are remarkable mouthpieces with a large chamber and rounded side walls, with a very similar profile to Reso Chamber Otto Link mouthpieces. This is the first of the HR mouthpieces that Brilhart made, and hard rubber quality of these oldest Brilharts is excellent.
I acquired this mouthpiece from a 1950's member of the Stan Kenton Band. He had it refaced by James Kanter, whose name you can see etched into the body of the mouthpiece. The facing curve wasn't the greatest and it was a little small for my tastes, so I recently sent this out to Nicolas Trefeil. His work is great, and is considered one of the very best European mouthpiece refacers. He opened it up to .095", which is around a Brilhart 7. The work is very clean and the tip and rails all look perfect. The mouthpiece plays very well. It has that vintage large chamber vibe to it, but there's also some nice bite and clarity to the sound. It's very reed friendly.
