I was considering getting one used from ebay as I have friends who say these pieces are actually pretty good, glad to see more positive things about them
Otto Link "New Vintage" Hard Rubber
I bought one of these (I think a #6) a few weeks back as I was getting my Mexi-Conn tenor ready to play.
Now I've been playing a Meyer #8 as my main tenor mouthpiece since 1978, but I thought I might like to try something different. Partly this came from finding an old Brilhart Ebolin and a #10 (!) hard rubber Link in the case with the Mexi-Conn. And partly it came from remembering that time some 20 years ago or so when I borrowed a fellow's Selmer Super with a hard rubber slant signature Link MP and thought it was really the bee's knees. I measured the old Meyer and went through the facing charts and I picked the Link with the closest opening to that of the #8 Meyer. As noted, I believe it's a #6, maybe 6*.
So the "New Vintage" Link rubber, for those of you who don't know, is supposed to be a sort of re-creation of the old "slant signature" or possibly "early Babbitt" Link pieces. (I can't keep track of all the different variants people have identified.) The "Otto Link" on it is at an angle, anyway. When I got mine, the first thing I noticed was that the bore was tapered, typical of current mass produced items where the manufacturer apparently can't be bothered to spend an extra $0.15 in labor to ream it to size and just leaves it as-molded. Well, I had the old Ebolin and a new Ebolin (I kind of went crazy there for a bit) with the same crappy tapered bores, so I bit the bullet and bought an adjustable reamer and fixed that. Beyond that, all I had done till last night was to play the Link for a few minutes at home and confirmed it played OK, but you can't really tell anything about it other than the basics.
Last night, however, I took it out on a big band rehearsal, playing jazz tenor. This is the first time I"ve put the "New Vintage" Otto Link to any kind of test.
It worked great! Lots of projection, plenty of cut when soloing, able to tame it down for section playing. Good rich sound. I'm going to use it on the gig this weekend.
I would recommend this piece to anyone who isn't fixated on the bright bright bright buzzy duck-call tenor sound and likes hard rubber pieces.
Now I've been playing a Meyer #8 as my main tenor mouthpiece since 1978, but I thought I might like to try something different. Partly this came from finding an old Brilhart Ebolin and a #10 (!) hard rubber Link in the case with the Mexi-Conn. And partly it came from remembering that time some 20 years ago or so when I borrowed a fellow's Selmer Super with a hard rubber slant signature Link MP and thought it was really the bee's knees. I measured the old Meyer and went through the facing charts and I picked the Link with the closest opening to that of the #8 Meyer. As noted, I believe it's a #6, maybe 6*.
So the "New Vintage" Link rubber, for those of you who don't know, is supposed to be a sort of re-creation of the old "slant signature" or possibly "early Babbitt" Link pieces. (I can't keep track of all the different variants people have identified.) The "Otto Link" on it is at an angle, anyway. When I got mine, the first thing I noticed was that the bore was tapered, typical of current mass produced items where the manufacturer apparently can't be bothered to spend an extra $0.15 in labor to ream it to size and just leaves it as-molded. Well, I had the old Ebolin and a new Ebolin (I kind of went crazy there for a bit) with the same crappy tapered bores, so I bit the bullet and bought an adjustable reamer and fixed that. Beyond that, all I had done till last night was to play the Link for a few minutes at home and confirmed it played OK, but you can't really tell anything about it other than the basics.
Last night, however, I took it out on a big band rehearsal, playing jazz tenor. This is the first time I"ve put the "New Vintage" Otto Link to any kind of test.
It worked great! Lots of projection, plenty of cut when soloing, able to tame it down for section playing. Good rich sound. I'm going to use it on the gig this weekend.
I would recommend this piece to anyone who isn't fixated on the bright bright bright buzzy duck-call tenor sound and likes hard rubber pieces.
1 - 2 of 10 Posts
Yeah its the new vintage one, all the modern ones I have played were terrible..Be careful, though. There are two types for sale out there. The one like I got, a slant signature model, and then there's a less expensive straight signature model. I went for the more expensive slant model, figuring 'you get what you pay for.' I don't know for a fact that the less expensive ones are worse than the more expensive, but with all the talk about bad Links being sold, they have to be coming from somewhere, and my two modern slants are fine.
1 - 2 of 10 Posts
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