[Jazz House]

Hello everybody,

I am very fortunate to have acquired this #7 Otto Link Tone Master tenor mouthpiece a couple of days ago (photos attached, I hope). I purchased it at my local woodwind shop while on a trip to get some more reeds. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw that classic shank shape peeking at me from underneath the glass counter. It sounds great (more on this later) and the price was more than reasonable, so I took it home immediately (after paying, of course). I was hoping that I could seek some advice as to the value of this piece, maybe its history and who might be a good choice to have it faithfully refaced.

First, some background info.

The silver plate is in really fantastic shape and the piece has its original ligature with the Otto Link stamp. I greased the screw yesterday and it works beautifully. What a great design for a ligature!

Unfortunately, this mouthpiece had been allowed to freely rattle inside a previous owner's case, so it does have a slight deformation to the tip. The shank is also slightly out of round, but this concerns me less as I'm told is a super easy fix anyway. The edges of the facing and rails are a little rounded, which is a further indicator of its age. The result is a piece that has an obviously inefficient facing curve. You can see it's just not quite right.

I used my reed geek gauge and feeler to measure the facing length. It's 28mm on one side and 27.5mm on the other. Obviously, that says nothing about the overall shape of the curve, but it does confirm what I've read online, which is that these mouthpieces had very long facings. It's stamped with a small font 7 on the table, which makes it a special order item, I believe. Rare indeed, it would seem. I think the facing is original too.

Anyway, enough of the (fun) geeking out! how does it play?

In short, the sound is wonderful. I usually play a Mark Spencer, which is kind of like a Tone Master's teenage grandchild in comparison. They share a similar chamber shape and exterior dimensions and I'm told that the old Tone Master served as partial inspiration for the Spencer pieces. The Spencer, of course, has that slightly concave step baffle, which is really the main difference. You can feel some shared lineage in the way that the sound spreads but can still be reined in and focussed when needed. The Link is not a particularly bright mouthpiece, and I'm not a particularly bright player either, but there is a persistent slight edge that I find really appealing and intriguing. Plenty to explore here. The main drawback I can feel right now is the dynamic range. I'm not an exceptionally loud player and I don't expect a huge volume out of this piece, but it does seem to wimp out a fair bit when I push hard. I think this might be the dodgy facing fighting back. For reference, I've tried La Voz M, La Voz MH, ZZ 3, ZZ 3.5 and Orange Box 4s on it. The best reed so far has been the La Voz M, but that's also my best reed on all my other pieces anyway, so I don't know how indicative this is.

The response isn't the best. It doesn't switch registers too quickly and is a little clumsier to articulate than my Spencer, which is already a clumsy mouthpiece. My modern V16L and Jazz Select pieces have far more efficient facing curves. It's also extremely sensitive to changes in reed position, which probably indicates that the curve is quite badly warped. Sliding the reed back and forth less than 0.5mm makes a huge difference. Subtone isn't really my thing generally and it's just as well because it's almost impossible on the Tone Master! :mrgreen: So I guess it sounds great, but doesn't necessarily play great. Make sense?

Refacing.

I've only ever had one piece refaced before and it was a Dukoff H chamber that I had opened up significantly. It made me a little nervous to ship my mouthpiece to America, but it was worth it in the end. I would love your advice as to who might do an excellent job on my mouthpiece. This piece is marked as a 7, so I probably want to keep it as close to original spec as possible. Given its rarity, I'm kind of it two minds about having it redone, but it does need work and I want to play it and not just look at it. I should add that although I would love to keep the piece in Australia, I'm not opposed to sending it to another country if there's somebody who's really good with these pieces. I'm not really interested in trying to make this piece into something it's not by massively altering the tip opening. It's quite obviously not designed to be huge. It's stamped a 7 and I want to keep it pretty much as is, but I want it to work properly.

One last thing - I haven't seen too many for sale lately, so I don't really know what it's worth. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

 

[1saxman]

The piece has been dropped a few times which is where the flat spot on the tip came from. This does not happen in a case. A band instrument repair shop can take care of the out-of-round shank and you should be able to find someone there who can repair the tip. All you want to do there is to make sure the metal that was displaced toward the reed is removed. It looks to me like the baffle area right behind the tip has been worked-on but if the plating is not broken that's probably original. I don't think it has been re-plated. Personally I would simply use it (except for the minor repairs) if I liked it. The plating will be removed from the table, side rails and tip rail along with probably some part of the baffle area if it is re-plated. It's possible to have the whole mouthpiece re-plated but of course it has to visit the machine buffer first, and most likely it won't be the same after that.
I'd like to walk into a shop and get that for a bargain - I think you picked up a nice mouthpiece.

 

[Reet McVouty]

How does it play? In short, the sound is wonderful.

So, why do anything to it? Why not just play it as is? What makes you think re-facing it will increase the dynamic range? And, what would that do to the overall tone you're getting now. Now, I'm not saying don't have any work done on it, but don't be too hasty with making any changes too soon. Play it for a year and in the mean time make some inquiries with actual mouthpiece techs as to what actually they can do to address your issues with this piece. The problem with SOTW is there are to many people giving advice based on their experiences which means absolutely nothing, because we're all different when it comes to equipment.

 

[Jazz House]

So, why do anything to it? Why not just play it as is? What makes you think re-facing it will increase the dynamic range? And, what would that do to the overall tone you're getting now. Now, I'm not saying don't have any work done on it, but don't be too hasty with making any changes too soon. Play it for a year and in the mean time make some inquiries with actual mouthpiece techs as to what actually they can do to address your issues with this piece. The problem with SOTW is there are to many people giving advice based on their experiences which means absolutely nothing, because we're all different when it comes to equipment.

Indeed we're all different when it comes to equipment, but surely some things are somewhat objective, like having a horn that doesn't leak or a mouthpiece that isn't dented at the tip. Regarding why I want it refaced or why I'm really strongly thinking about it, I have two reasons.

1- The piece obviously doesn't play as well as it could/should. I can tell that the actual core sound is pretty fantastic, but the response isn't really good at all. I'm experienced enough on the horn to wrestle the mouthpiece into more or less doing what I want it to, but it's still excessively difficult to articulate and really fussy about reed position. I would compare this to playing a great horn that has a number of leaks.

2 - The piece is obviously damaged. As 1saxman says above, it's probably been dropped.

All I really need is for the piece to actually play like it works properly. I'm an experienced and accomplished enough player that I know not to expect a miracle from a reface and I can tell when a piece probably needs one.

 

[mrpeebee]

Your Tone Master 7 is an Improved Tone Master (the Coltrane model), produced between 1946 and 1949. A 7 tip is really rare for the first Tone Master model, but a bit less rare for the Coltrane model. Still it's an exception and I think that the price could be 400 to 600 USD, depending on the shape.

I had one like that in a 7 and 7*, both refaced before I got them. Traded both of them, still have a beautiful playing 8, refaced by Erik G.

To me it seems (from your first picture) that someone touched the baffle area just behind the tip. The tip rails is indeed damaged and also very thin.

Why don't you send it to Mark Spencer? I did read he is back in business and he probably could restore your TM 7 close to original specs.

 

[ilikejam]

Original Tonemasters have distinctive finishing work on the tips, I am uncertain if the tip work on yours is original, not just the baffle behind the tip which appears to have been worked, from the pictures, but the actual tip rail doesn't look like the NY Link style of finishing. A clear close up directly above the tip rail could help clarify this.
There are a number of 'big name' mouthpiece tech's who have adjusted and restamped many pieces over the years--they did it to rubber pieces too and you simply can't tell, one doesn't mention their names out of 'politeness', but there are a lot of those pieces out there, however the silver plating on your piece looks mostly original, perhaps the tip and baffle area on yours was spot plated?
The really nice refaced ToneMasters have an extraordinary tone quality, to my ear unmatched by anything else.
If this piece was mine I would likely have it measured and lightly restored to its original specifications. Half a dozen of the great techs on the forum can perform this kind of work, I would probably ask Mojo to measure it first and seek his advice regarding a minimal restoration to its original specs.
Who knows what it's worth? Who knows what anything is worth presently, if it's original and it is restored to top playing condition it could be worth $500-$850usd.

 

[Jazz House]

Original Tonemasters have distinctive finishing work on the tips, I am uncertain if the tip work on yours is original, not just the baffle behind the tip which appears to have been worked, from the pictures, but the actual tip rail doesn't look like the NY Link style of finishing. A clear close up directly above the tip rail could help clarify this.
There are a number of 'big name' mouthpiece tech's who have adjusted and restamped many pieces over the years--they did it to rubber pieces too and you simply can't tell, one doesn't mention their names out of 'politeness', but there are a lot of those pieces out there, however the silver plating on your piece looks mostly original, perhaps the tip and baffle area on yours was spot plated?
The really nice refaced ToneMasters have an extraordinary tone quality, to my ear unmatched by anything else.
If this piece was mine I would likely have it measured and lightly restored to its original specifications. Half a dozen of the great techs on the forum can perform this kind of work, I would probably ask Mojo to measure it first and seek his advice regarding a minimal restoration to its original specs.
Who knows what it's worth? Who knows what anything is worth presently, if it's original and it is restored to top playing condition it could be worth $500-$850usd.

It seems that the consensus is that the baffle might not be original. Could this be a botched attempt at a post dropping repair? I've found quite frequently that many of the older retired players who sell old horns in Australia used to do their own repair work. Sometimes the repair work is pretty atrocious.

Given where the piece came from (I was told in the shop), I doubt that it's one of the 'big name' jobs you mention. I did watch Marin Spivack's rather excellent overview of the NY Tone Master mouthpieces and he also talked about the re-stamping you mention.

I think the way to go will be a faithful and minimal restoration job.

Also, thanks everybody for the tips on what it's worth. I don't think I'll ever be selling this piece because it's so cool to own, but it's nice to know.

 

[TOcchiuto]

This piece has definite signs of alteration, but can be restored. They are very cool pieces for sure!