Author: John Scorgie
Date: 2002-02-19 23:23
To add a bit to the excellent posting above by JMcAulay:
When I began playing clarinet and saxophones in the 1950s, in my part of the midwest Brilharts were the most popular aftermarket sax mouthpieces, and were also popular for clarinet. Kind of a best buy replacement. As I remember most of his sax and clarinet mpces were off white with black lettering, altho both of my Brilhart rubber mpces are black. Whenever you hear an old sax player with an old sax and an old sax mpce, and a nice big sweet sound which also has some real body to it, chances are that he or she is playing on a Brilhart mpce (the Runyons, Meyers, Links, et al. were nice if you could afford one).
Brilhart offered several different facings, and his chamber designs tended to produce a brighter sound than the deep chambers found on many of the French style mpces of that era. Brilharts and Runyons were similar in this regard, altho the Runyon partisans will howl at that statement. I still occasionally use a Brilhart metal tenor mpce, a Brilhart rubber tenor mpce and a Brilhart clarinet mpce.
The Selmer company still produces mpces with the Brilhart name, and sells them at rather low prices, but I haven't played them and thus don't know if they bear any resemblance to my classic Brilharts. Hopefully one of the younger players will read this string and follow up with some up to date advice on the current Brilhart line.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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