Kessler Tenor MP now in the works... opinions please...

[DaveKessler]

OK, so my alto mouthpieces so far have been getting great response. I have had many people outside of this forum as well who have bought them and so far, all have been impressed.

I have also been asked by about 10 people now whether or not we are doing a tenor equivalent.

So as of this morning, my mouthpiece tech and I are in the works for this. We will be doing the same process that we did on the alto. Take a plastic JJ Babbitt straight wall chamber blank and copying the tip and the facing of another mouthpiece. For the alto we did an older C* and an old New York Meyer 5.

For the tenor, this is what we are thinking:

We will probably do a C* or a Selmer D designed more for the basic student as well as for familiarity.

For the "performance" piece, we just finished hand copying an old Otto Link 7. This in my techs opinion, is the tenor equivalent to the NYM5 that we copied for alto.

If anyone has any opinion on what else we may want to copy instead of the 2 listed (because I am only going to do 2 models)... your input would be most appreciated.

[DaveKessler]

OK,

little more of an update. I think we are not going to bother with the Selmer copy on the tenor mouthpiece.

We will be doing the Otto Link 7 copy and then doing the same mouthpiece with a more closed of a tip that would be closer to a 5 for newer students.

The models will designated as L7 & L5

We just now are finishing our prototypes for both and testing them here in our shop with our teachers. So far, very good. We are going to do some finishing touches and on Tuesday most likely, send them off to have the production CAMs made for them.

[DaveKessler]

Final Update I promsie! (at least until we get the production models in stock!)

Tip measurements will be:

L7 - .100"
L5 - .0925"

[arsenic87]

what sort of prices are considering to put on these? i may be interested in th .100" opening. thanks, Ron.

[DaveKessler]

what sort of prices are considering to put on these? i may be interested in th .100" opening. thanks, Ron.

Not 100% sure yet on prices but they should be inline where I am selling the alto pieces at.

My guess is that both models in the plastic will run about $33 and if I can get them to do the 50/50 (hard rubber/plastic) versions, we would probably be around $45.

It will most likely be about 3-4 weeks before I know for sure my costs because we still have to have the production cams made.

[Mike Cesati]

I'd be happy to try a .100. I play Links and would like to see what you come up with.

[DaveKessler]

Update:

Spoke to JJ Babbitt this morning. The production CAMs are completed for both of out tenor models.

They sent out this morning a total of 4 mouthpieces. What I have coming is:

1 Plastic Kessler L5 MP
1 50/50 (hard rubber/plastic) Kessler L5 MP

1 Plastic Kessler L7 MP
1 50/50 Kessler L7 MP

Again, the L5 is a tip opening of .0925 and the L7 is a .100 tip.

After we have tested them, I will probably do the same thing with these as I did the alto mouthpieces and send out the 2 plastic models to SOTW users for free evaluation.

If anyone is interested in this, post the request here and e-mail me you contact info and mailing address.

Dave

[arsenic87]

I wouldn't mind giving them a try. I believe my email is on the button at the bottom of the post.
Ron

[Mike Cesati]

I would love to evaluate a 50/50 L7. CHEZMUSIC@aol.com

[Carl H.]

I would be happy to try out whatever you send my way. I could also pass it around to others around here for feedback as well. Randy Jones at tenor madness is just down the road from here too, and I'm sure he'd like to try it too.

carl_holm@hotmail.com

[RalphF]

Hi, I'd be happy to try out your tenor mouthpieces.
<ralphfranke@iprimus.com.au>

[DaveKessler]

ick!

So we got our prototype mouthpieces from JJ Babbitt. See previous comment as to what we think. ick!

They did NOT turn out anywhere near what our prototypes played like. So we are going to go over them with our guages (which of course my tech doesnt have with him right now) and find out whats wrong with them.

They arent bad but they arent as good as what we sent.

Give me a little more time on this since we are really busy with repairs right now.

Very bummed!!!

[Mike W]

Hang in there Dave!

[Carl H.]

Did your pieces turn out similarly to the other babbitt lines of mouthpieces? Good designs with less than stellar finish? I am a link fan but am scared to order a new one and can't afford a vintage or Doc Tenney improved. I hope you can get your pieces made to your standards. I sure would like to give one of your approved pieces a try.
Who knows, maybe your efforts will show them how to fix their whole manufacturing process.

Good luck, we're pullin for ya.

[DaveKessler]

the pieces turned out to play MUCH darker then our hand finished production samples were (these are the mouthpieces we sent to have the CAMS based one).

We are going to be going over them tomorrow with a fine tooth comb to find out what happened.

Again, they are just really dark which is Not what we were looking for. Granted, this may be great for some people but we didnt care for it.

I might still send these out and get your all's opinions on them just for kicks.

We'll see. (grumble grumble grumble)

[Andres]

Hmm...I 'm interested in one of your "unacceptable" prototypes. Please drop me an email.

Thanks.

[arsenic87]

I am still interested, in trying them out, even if they are dark, may be just what I am looking for!
Keep us posted.
Ron

[arsenic87]

What's up with these, are they that bad? Are you going back to the drawing board or shelving the project. Please update us, thanks.
Ron

[Mike Ruhl]

I'll sign up to try them both, once you're ready to send them out. I've played Links for years on my Super 20 tenor...

[DaveKessler]

I think we maight be just about ready with them. One of the problems was my tech put on a Horrendously bad fibracell reed. So that made them play stuffy and dark.

My father uses too soft of a reed (wimp) and was using a Soft Fibracell to boot.

We touched them up a little, used better reeds and they arent that bad. They still arent as good as the alto mouthpieces but I think they are now approaching the respectable range.

I will be hashing this out with my tech over the remainder of the week but could possibly start sending them out for trial as early as next week.

One update, the L7 is actually a .1025" tip opening compared to the originally posted .100" tip.

[arsenic87]

Thanks, let us know when you want contact information.
Ron

[Mike Ruhl]

Dave - any update on the tenor mouthpieces?

[DaveKessler]

Dave - any update on the tenor mouthpieces?

Sorry but we have put them on the back burner until after school starts it seems. We still have about 600 rental return instruments to get ready in 3 weeks so for now, all of our time is devoted to the start of school.

We are close. Still talking with Babbitt trying to figure out exactly whats going on. Still not 100% satisfied. We dont just want to rush something out just because, we want it to be right.

The "NYPro" alto piece is going to start a production run of 6 this week. We have 2 prototypes of our own that turned out Flippin Fantastic. That is probably about 2 weeks away.

I will let you know.

[Mike Ruhl]

Let's see...600 horns in 21 days...that's, um...almost 30 horns a day! And I thought I was busy. :shock:

[DaveKessler]

Let's see...600 horns in 21 days...that's, um...almost 30 horns a day! And I thought I was busy. :shock:

Yeah and thats not including the constant influx of customer horns and the fact that my main Repair Apprentince (spelling?) who does all of the rental horn dissassembly and cleaning was in a car accident 2 months ago and wont be back for another month still. UGH!!!

[DaveKessler]

Update...

We had a chance to go over the mouthpieces some more with Babbitt and think we figured out what went wrong.

one of the problems was in how Babbitt measured the tips of our samples.

Babbit measures the tip opening from the tip. We measure with Drop in guages. Granted this should make a ton of difference but there were other issues that I dont feel like typing that much this morning.

Good new is that new samples are done with the fixed measurements. (we fixed the original samples they sent and sent them back to them).

We should have new samples either today or tomorrow.

Will let you know once we have tested them.

[DaveKessler]

Well the samples came in and they were identical to the previous ones. Wrong.

Ugh...

So for now, we are putting the tenor pieces on hold until October most likely since we are swamped with school kids now and will be for the next month.