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Re: Powertone mouthpiece

Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2019-11-19 21:06

Arnold Brilhart was a very nice and amazing man. I worked with him at Rico for maybe 15 years. His knowledge with mouthpieces was amazing and he took a lot of chances to improve how mouthpieces were made. He was also one of the best sight readers I've ever played with, this guy had a gift and never made a mistake. I feel he was more at home with playing the saxes than the clarinet.

He was the first mouthpiece maker to start something called injection molding. This process surely worked well for him as he made a ton of money! He was able to mold a mouthpiece in a minute or less. The process is using plastic pellets then heated to the melting point, maybe 400 degrees or so, and then forced into the injection mold. About a minute later the mouthpiece was done. Yes there was still that need to put a cork on the mouthpiece and he also designed a machine t put on the facing. So a mouthpiece from the start to the end took way less that 5 minutes. Injection molding is what I use.

As for refacing, just do a search here. There are a lot of talented mouthpiece makers and refacers. His clarinet mouthpieces were never a favorite of mine, but they were still very good. He had 2 main locations when he made mouthpieces, first just outside of New York City and near me here in California. He never had a company in England as stated above. We were kinda neighbors, lived maybe 4 miles from each other near Northridge, CA. Then during a horrible Northridge earthquake in the mid 1990's his building was destroyed. The place we had dinner at a lot was at the Northridge Mall and that too was totally wrecked. It took 5 years to rebuild the mall. Just smashed. This may have freaked him out too much. We all had a hard time with this quake. I had a condo which suffered $30,000 in damage. His place was 10 times worse and thankfully he lived. He then started focusing on retirement at the age of 91 or so! Yes you read this correctly! He moved to the Palm Desert area, outside of Palm Springs with his son. Oh, his wife of so many years passed away too, which is probably part of the reason for retiring. He still did work for Rico after moving, but part-time. I think he passed away around 93 to 94.

You have a nice mouthpiece, but it's not worth much. I'm not sure if it's worth refacing, but that is for you to decide. Don't spend a lot refacing it. Hope this helped! In this case I thought you'd like to know more about Arnold! A true friend and one heck of a gifted musician.

Designer of - Vintage 1940 Cicero Mouthpieces and the La Vecchia mouthpieces

Yamaha Artist 2015

Post Edited (2019-11-19 21:14)

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