“As a matter of fact: after a couple of days of trying I feel free to say this: The Reeves #42 underpart with Warburton #5 top gives excellent results despite of the little mismatch. The sound is rather fat, warm and jazzy. I play a large bore Bach Strad New York #7 edition 2007 by the way. This horn produces already a warm sound. – Also good is the Bach # 7B underpart with the same Warb #5 rim on top. This Bach mouthpiece was already exceptional before the threading, in comparison with other Bach mpcs. It gives a Chet Baker like sound. I’m glad I sent it too you for threading. – And last but not least the GR #65MX underpart goes well with your rim #42 on top! (although the rim is slightly to thick for me and although again there is a mismatch between the two parts). This last combination gives the more clean sound and most ease of intonation.
I can imagine that a classical player would fall for this kind of sound.
I as a jazz trumpeter feel that the GR mpc produces too clean a sound. It seems that the GR people in their quest to make a scientific masterpiece that is perfectly calculated have succeeded in making a mouthpiece that creates too much of a sinusoidal sound, i.e. it is too clean and therefore too cold. Obviously they have sacrificed the warmth (which is essentially permitting a few slightly out of tune frequencies in the whole sound spectre) in favor of ease of intonation and full sound. As they say: discontinuities are in ALL other mpcs (a bold statement) and not in theirs; this might very well be the reason that their mpcs (at least the few #65s that I have tried) produce too clean sounds. At least for jazz musicians like me who have a different sound ideal in their minds. At the same time this is an illustration of the fact that you always end up with a compromise: more warmth means a slighly less pure sound.
I did not mean to criticize one of the best mpc makers, it is all a matter of taste. I hope you don’t publish this second part of my writing. And maybe you don’t even agree with what I am writing and think that I as an amateur should stay away from the physics.
Anyway, I am glad with the parts and I might come back to you in the future.
Yours truly,
Edward H.J. Ninck Blok.
PS. I also was happy that there were no traces of a lathe on the parts. Nice work! Thanks again!”




2008 marks the 40th anniversary of Bob Reeves opening up shop. In commemoration of this feat, we have started up this blog that will feature news, equipment advice, and plenty of great stories from Bob’s arsenal (at least those that can be repeated