An Industry First - Custom Made Mouthpieces!
BEHN VINTAGE: You design your dream mouthpiece and we make it for you.
We'll provide instructions to make the process easy, educational, and exciting.
All you need to do is go through our options, make your selections and we'll do the rest.
Let's work together and let's create something special.
S
X
LC
U
SC
Chamber
The Chamber is the internal portion of your mouthpiece that is associated with the beak. It is everything except the bore. It includes the Baffle and Sidewall shapes.
Your mouthpiece's Chamber will highly influence your resonance, response, and tonal character. We've got an option for every style, sound, and need.
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S is free blowing, offers lots of tonal ring, zing, power and projection, and is flexible and fast handling. BEHN S-curve chambers have a medium size chamber to blend breadth with core, her unique shape adds power and projection
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X is our narrow throat, deep baffle choice. It has depth of sound, ring, brilliance, and vitality. X has the uncanny ability to be both bright and dark at the same time - it's really interesting, and can serve a lot of playing styles and tonal concepts depending on how it's configured with facing and rail options.
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LC is our Large Chamber, moderate baffle option. It is open and free with a larger air flow capacity. It creates a large resonance without being dull.
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U is our deepest baffle for our darkest tone. Match this chamber option with your choice of narrow rails for resonance, or wide rails for extra chocolaty darkness - either way, this chamber design is highly versatile.
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SC is our Small Chamber, higher pitch option - this mouthpiece has a tight core resonance, increased tonal brilliance, and a touch of depth.
Rails
Generally speaking, wide rails add resistance and sound darker, whereas narrow rails reduce resistance and sound brighter. Wide windows reduce resistance and narrow windows add resistance.
Narrow windows will add core to your sound, and increase blowing resistance. Coupled with narrow rails, crisp resonance, quick handling, and sparkling response will result. Combined with a long facing and wide rails, a deep, round, dark, and free blowing experience can result.
Wider windows will blow freer, and offer a broader tonal scope. With a tighter facing, and wider rails, it will play with a more spread-free tone quality that can be warm, round, and full bodied. (Lighter reed recommended).
Narrow rails will create a quick handling experience, they'll brighten your timbre, add resonance, and reduce your blowing resistance.
Wider rails will slow down the way your mouthpiece responds, they'll add some working resistance, and they'll dampen your reed's vibration - which in turn will dampen your resonance. Wider rails can blow free with longer facings.
Wide
Thin
Very Thin Rails
Here we offer special attention the Very Thin railed option. These days BEHN is the only maker who produces very thin railed mouthpieces, however when done right, sublime resonance, brilliance, response, and energy can come from a thin railed mouthpiece.
Conventional wisdom would have you believe that thin rails are bright, and brightness in general is a bad thing. However if you just have a look over at the jazz tenor saxophone world - their perspective is different. Thin rails are difficult to make and so it becomes bragging rights to a mouthpiece maker who produces thin rails. And thin rails also offer more power, energy, and ease of propagation - the stuff that jazzers really welcome.
So how can thin railed mouthpieces benefit you - a classical artist? Well, consider that the old great vintage era mouthpieces of 100 years ago were ALL made with thin, and some with VERY thin rails. Those mouthpieces sounded great! The players using them made full, deep, warm and resonant sounds on them, and I dare say that they didn't sound bright-bad. They sounded bright-good. What's the difference? Well edgy, spread, and crass playing is bright-bad. Sweet, elegant, sonorous, and energetic elegance is bright-good.
Very Thin rails, paired with a more resistant facing can balance each other to produce a highly refined, energetic, responsive, and beautifully sweet sounding mouthpiece that is nimble handling for your artistic whimsy.
FACING
Generally speaking, close facings require less embouchure manipulation and are more stable. Open facings offer a larger range, and allow for more embouchure involvement - by comparison.
It will help to know what facing you currently play and then add notes about what you like about it, and what you would like different.
Your CONCEPT
Let us know what what kind of sound and response you prefer. Do you like sparkly ringing, effervescent response, or mellow, broad, softer response?
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