'bout 'dem new mouthpieces....

I've always wanted to be in the mouthpiece business. I freely admit that I have a BAAAAD mouthpiece habit: I own at least a hundred different ones, and I was probably deluded into believing each and every one of them was going to solve all of my playing and personal problems.

Over the years, I've taken mouthpiece refacing lessons from anyone and everyone who claimed to have any knowlege of this black art, most notably Santy Runyon and his greatest student and successor to the throne, Paul Coats. I don't know how many mouthpieces I've ruined learning how to reface. It's a very big number. I've also ruined many a perfectly good mouthpiece through altering the window size, the baffle, the chamber size, the angle of the floor etc. I've spent a huge amount of money on diamond files, every mouthpiece measuring guage known to Western (and maybe Eastern) man, granite leveling blocks, and mile after mile of fine emery paper.

I always try to learn from my mistakes, and honestly, I've made plenty of them in this area. Slowly, over a period of years, I developed some designs that seemed to work for me.

For some reason, the companies that market mouthpieces seem to have ignored a basic fact about the needs of saxophonists: On any given Saturday night, there are more players out there playing "Mustang Sally" than there are guys playing "Giant Steps". Nobody was making a piece for guys who actually make a living playing. The jazzers (admitidly not all of them, but certainly the overwhelmingly vast majority of them), who all want to sound like Coltrane, are usually appearing at the local "open mic" night or working "for the door". I wanted to make a series of mouthpieces for guys who actually make a living playing, or at least aspire to do so!

There are three models currently available. Each one is significantly different from the other. You should buy one of each. You wouldn't go out on the golf course with only one club in your bag, now would you? Think about this for a minute....Do you really want to sound the same on every gig? Here's the lineup:

STEVE GOODSON MODEL
There are two versions of this series, a metal version and a plastic version. The metal version is solid brass and silver plated. The plastic version is made from a nicely resonant synthetic material, and no, I'm not about to tell you what it is. Yes, you can only get it from me, or one of the dealers of my products.

The metal version is similar in concept to an "Otto Link on Steroids" crossbred with a Selmer metal Jazz. The chamber is rather large, and the baffle is straight. The ligature is virtually identical to the one used on the Selmer metal series (except it's reinforced at the screw holders so it doesn't break like the Selmer's invariably do) and the soprano ligature uses a single screw so you can accurately center the pressure point on the reed. It's available in a variety of facings for alto, tenor, and soprano.

The composite version is designed for student use. The students of this great land of ours are getting seriously overcharged for the mythical C star! My mouthpiece plays better, and is a third of the price! It's available for alto, tenor, and soprano as well.

SAXGOURMET SERIES
This is a serious mouthpiece for rock and roll work. It's got a "cliff" baffle, and virtually no resistance. The ligature is attached to the mouthpiece (think Lawton), and has special contact points to distribute the pressure evenly to the reed. They're gold plated, and available in a wide variety of tip openings for alto, tenor, and soprano. The facings are dead on accurate. They subtone phenomenally well, and have plenty of head room when you really need to push it.

THE HAND MADE SERIES
This is The Big Daddy Rabbit With the Fuzzy Tongue! Each and every one is hand faced by Paul Coats (I would trust nobody else) and is the finest mouthpiece available for tenor saxophone (only) at an price from anybody.
The body is very long (it tunes way down on the cork) and has a great deal of mass. The sides are fluted (sort of a Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon 1930's science fiction look) and they're gold plated. The chamber is compound: a high baffle leads to a large chamber with a "bullet" opening. The tone is complex, to say the least. The beak has an extremely pronounced "duckbill". It has no resistance. None. Not a bit. The body is solid bell quality brass (made to my specifications by EMR Corporation in Phenix, Az, which is owned by my buddy and master sax player Bill Lieske) and is a work of art in itself. There's one and one only tip opening and facing (.105) which we have determined to be the optimum for this design. There's nothing like it. Expensive? You better believe it. The best available? You be the judge.

NEW PROJECTS
I've got several new designs in development at present. Watch this space and www.nationofmusic for news of my latest and greatest mouthpiece designs.