About Handcrafted Saxophone Mouthpieces by Ron Coelho

Each mouthpiece is CNC machined from a hard rubber casting, it is then left on a rack to season or equalize, for at least a week so the material will relax and come to equilibrium after being machined. Then it is sculpted with hand tools to the exact shape and finish inside and out. Now the real work of turning it into something truly musical begins:

Reeds are carefully chosen to begin the playing and fine tuning.

• TENOR: Rico Jazz Select 2 medium unfiled and also a La Voz medium.
  
• ALTO: Rico Jazz select 2 medium unfiled and also Hemke 2 1/2.
  
• BARITONE: Rico 2 1/2 and Rico Jazz Select 3S Filed.
  

Each mouthpiece is played and fine tuned for the following characteristics.

RESISTANCE POINT: Hugely important, there is good resistance and bad resistance. Good resistance gives something to push against and becomes familiar to the embouchure, this leads to good intonation and evenness of scale, without struggling to adjust different ranges of the horn. Bad resistance makes the horn stuffy and tires the embouchure....Not good.

Also essential to a great mouthpiece, the ratio of overtones to fundamental is blended, by making very subtle adjustments to the facing curve.

Together with an easy flowing resistance the mouthpiece now has a rich palette of tone colors.
YOU get  a BIG sound without having to struggle, all thats left to do is to make the music come alive......

Currently six models are available:

One each of rollover baffle and wedge baffle, the higher baffle models are more difficult to make
as they are brighter and more powerful BUT still must sound smooth and beautiful, they are priced
higher because they take longer to make.

Rollover baffle models are $235.00
Wedge baffle models are $285.00

Offering only a small number of models allows for a significant amount of time and handwork and playing of each mouthpiece.

These designs have been fine tuned with feedback from profesional saxophone players all over the world and have evolved over 8 years of mouthpiece making.

Each mouthpiece is played and fine tuned playing real music and evaluating the musicality of the mouthpiece.

FINALLY when the mouthpiece becomes just pure fun to play it is ready.

Now you will receive a mouthpiece that will inspire you,  and as one of my customers wrote:

"The best playing and sounding mpcs I've ever used. Just great mouthpieces for the working musician. Extremely musical,versatile...AND make you not want to put the horn down out of a fear that you'll miss the next new thing you get out of your horn..."

ALTO:

90R

80B

TENOR:

105R

115B

My horns for play-testing are as follows..

Soprano... Cannonball silver plated no lacquer, with 40 degree up swept bell a great little horn...

Alto... late King Super 20 with sterling neck... This horn is ever so slightly stuffy, which is great for me because if a mouthpiece blows free and vibrant on this horn I know it will kill on a better horn...;o)

Tenor... Jupiter... Silver plated with solid sterling neck... A wonderful instrument..I got it new and every month the sound opens up more and the intonation is dead nuts...

Baritone... This is my baby... Selmer low A, serial number around 140k a smokin horn...intonation is a bit squirely but again this is an advantage it has very typical problems, so if i can get it to play in tune I know the mouthpiece is right...