Coming To A Mailbox Near You

For those of you that have ordered an AMMA tenor saxophone mouthpiece I thought you may be interested to see what will be arriving at your doorstep in the next few weeks.

The packaging was printed at a local letterpress shop in Bellingham, WA.  Their tooling is beautiful and the shop has that old world craftsman feel to it.  The beautiful packaging was designed by the same company that created our logo and website.

The linen look of the paper we used reflects the vintage mouthpiece boxs of our vintage mouthpiece collection.  The leather case is a basic single version of our double mouthpiece case.  It is similar in design to the double case but does not have the belt clips or Velcro and zipper pockets. 

We wanted every aspect of the AMMA, including its packaging, to represent the magic we feel it holds.  Here are some pictures of what you will be seeing in your mailbox very soon!

What is a TRUE large chamber?

A lot of excellent discussion has started about large chamber mouthpieces so I decided to see if I could add some clarification to the topic.

Many mouthpiece manufacturers use the term large chamber, yet it designates something different to each manufacturer. We use the term True Large Chamber in referring to the AMMA s large chamber because the chamber TRULY is significantly larger than the bore and window. A True Large Chamber requires approximately a 30% increase in volume from the volume of the bore throughout the entire chamber. A chamber such as this requires a significant concavity to the inner side walls in order to taper the side walls to the tip evenly. The difference in sound with this combination is significant. A True Large Chamber will look as big as an Otto Link Master Link or Tone Master.

The larger a chamber is the harder it is to manufacture. This is because it is difficult to get tooling inside the mouthpiece. To get around this issue the Otto Link mouthpieces have always been made in two cast halves soldered together. This allows the large chamber and inner side walls to be made separately. It is this configuration that has also made the Otto Link mouthpieces standard equipment for a plethora of tenor saxophone players throughout history.

In the AMMA we have taken a large chamber, added projection, deepened the bottom end response and perfected the facing curve. Best of all we have done this through machining such that the interior is virtually indistinguishable from a complex cast mouthpiece. We feel very proud of this achievement.

Mouthpiece Production Methods

Ever wonder why there aren’t more large-chamber mouthpieces in the market place? Mouthpieces are made primarily in three ways. 1) Investment casting 2) Injection molding 3) CNC milling machines and lathes. Here is a brief explanation of each procedure, just skip past this section to continue on with the historical development of the mouthpiece.