If you had to pick just 1 tenor mouthpiece to use for everything (except concert band/legit stuff) what would it be? No switching pieces for different styles/situations. Just one piece to use for jazz/blues/funk/pop/rock/accoustic/electric/small group/big band/post bop/swing/straight ahead/fusion/smooth jazz/anything I left out.
Anyway, for me it would be any HR Link-like piece in a 7 - 7* range. Could be a well-behaved (aka refaced) Tone Edge or Slant, a Morgan 8L or 8EL, a Tenney Jazzmaster or Slant, Lamberson J6, etc. I'm sure there are others.
I used to have a blue Jumbo Java T97(?) that basically did it all. (It looked like someone had taken down the baffle a little bit.) I regret selling that one! Still, I have high hopes for the FL Spectruoso I've been using the last couple days. Obviously not the same edge, for rock/pop stuff, as the Jumbo Java, but it's pretty darn flexible.
though I'm trying out other pieces I never actually play ( perfom, rehearse) on any other piece. I used it for over 6 months now and it looks like I'm going to stick with it.
I don't switch tenor mouthpieces anymore, but I do switch tenors depending upon the venue. However, I'll used either horn for rock or jazz; the 10M with a fairly open RPC rollover and the Silversonic with a very open high baffle RPC.
Yup, I get that---but the title of this thread is "Just 1 tenor mouthpiece" if you had to choose, not "Just two mouthpieces matched to two different horns". Which of the two horn/mpc combinations would you choose if you had to?
Drake Ceramic Mouthpiece - "Double Ring" model. It's darker and brighter at the same time than most others I've tried, totally free-blowing, very loud but with tons of control. I've just done a handful of jobbing dates on this piece, and I can go from dinner jazz to screaming rock with no problem. And they are currently $159, which is crazy.
But make sure you experiment with different reeds if you try one! I had to go a full 1/2 strength harder than I usually play on other pieces (I've owned slants, Florida STM, Morgans, Ponzol, and many others). I needed a few days of playing it, and that combined with the harder reeds made it really sing for me.
I think you could do this with a lot of mouthpieces. Right now, I would choose either a Barone Jazz or a Barone Hollywood. I'm thinking, though, that a Theo Wanne Kali (or maybe even a Gaia) would do it for me, too.
I keep wanting to do this, but it's hard to part with good mouthpieces. I like trying different pieces, but it's difficult to sell the ones that are great -- even if they don't fit your own concept or style well enough to become your number one. Maybe this should become my New Year's Resolution.
Drake Contemporary 8. I would still be tempted to drag out the Dukoff for a screaming altissimo gig, but I could cover it on the Drake as well (as well as I could cover it at all, that is -- screaming altissimo on tenor is not my strong point).
Hey grumps, I think that still counts as two mouthpieces (rollover/high baffle), although probably as close to one feel as you can get...
I would go with the RPC 115B I have had for the last 5 years or so, I can cover all the bases with that even though I find it thins out a bit for the softer stuff.
And I might still be switching mouthpieces back and forth between horns if I hadn't listened to recordings of each horn with its chosen mouthpiece and not been able to tell them apart. But it's a known fact that certain mouthpieces work better for certain players with certain horns. So it would be counter-productive to use only one mouthpiece for two entirely different horns, expecting it to work well with each of them.
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