The floor of a great concert hall is not concrete, It is wood. The walls and the ceiling all play important roles in making a fine acoustic environment. Similarly a mouthpiece is like a miniature concert hall because both the design and the material from which it is made have profound effect over the playing experience. For decades clarinetists have wished that modern mouthpieces would be made of material that is just like 1930’s era Chedeville hard rubber. Because old Chedeville clarinet mouthpieces are particularly well known for their beautiful sound, we decided that the reproduction of old Chedeville rubber would be a fundamental goal.

First we needed to sacrifice a great mouthpiece to determine its formula and sound propagation. We sent an excellent 1930’s era Henri Chedeville clarinet mouthpiece to our laboratory for a comprehensive compound analysis. Upon the completion of a long series of tests, we determined the ingredients and ratios. But that was only the beginning.

In order to exactly reproduce our Chedeville’s material we still needed to determine the temperature and duration of our vulcanization process. We made a series of rod rubber samples using cure cycles that lengthened incrementally. We analyzed each batch with physical and acoustic testing equipment (Dynamic Mechanichal Analysis) and altered our cure gradually until a successful match had been produced. We knew we were on target when the test data matched that of the sample material from our Henri Chedeville clarinet mouthpiece.

Please enjoy the following brief description of how Behn Proprietary Rod Rubber is manufactured.

Natural rubber is mixed with sulfur and other ingredients to produce a doughy like compound. This material is rolled into rod shaped links and then placed into our mold. The mold is placed into a press where heat and pressure are applied for a long cure cycle. The resulting rods are then cut into mothpiece-sized billets, ready for machining.

Rubber plantation



Rubber latex is tapped from a tree



Sulfur is a key component in fine
acoustic grade hard rubber


Rubber compound.
Natural rubber latex is mixed with sulfur
and other secret ingredients



Flattening the rubber compound
to prepare it for the cure






Rolling the rubber sheet is crucial in creating
fine acoustic grade rubber rods



Preheating the rod rubber mold



Rubber curing under intense pressure

It is important to note that Chedeville used many different rubber compounds throughout their history and even during the golden years of the thirties, one can measure notable differences in their hard rubbers and acoustics.  We took great effort to acquire the ideal material from that era, as represented by our Henri Chedeville mouthpiece. 

Through laboratory analysis backed up by extensive field testing, we are confident that our new material possesses the same acoustic advantages as our Henri Chedeville and other special mouthpieces of the past.

Presenting our material to the clarinet community as an accurate reproduction of our Chedeville’s material is a bold statement, but it comes from dozens of chemical, material, and physical tests.  We feel that we have invested in the appropriate science and testing to support our statements.  The information gained from these tests helped us learn the nature of our rubber’s sound propagation.  These discoveries led us to acoustic testing that confirmed our rubber is not only a physical copy, but an acoustic match as well.  We are very proud of what we have achieved and we invite you to be the judge of our efforts.