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| Vintage Brilhart with Serial Number |
Fortunately, The Jazz Clarinet's instrument and mouthpiece museum contains both items, and I've done exactly that today to find out what the combination might yield.
What can I say about this beautiful vintage 'piece?
First, it's important to distinguish these from the cheap Brilharts made since the late 1960s by Conn Selmer. The contemporary Brilharts are very cheap, and generally sound that way. While the current design owes a debt to the earlier Brilharts, vintage pieces have characteristics of being a more serious, professional level mouthpieces--in terms of projection and depth of sound especially.
The sound of this one is round and open: very loud and strong. The core is not easy to control at first, tending to split in several directions until one's period of adjustment is over. But with time and patience, you can adjust!
Honestly, the Shavian sound concept can be reached with this mouthpiece--the big roundness, the edge, the pinpoint altissimo. The more you play it, the more the unique Ebolin material yields.
Remember that Artie knew and worked with Arnold Brilhart (Brilhart even collaborated on Shaw's Clarinet Method). So this is about as authentic a mouthpiece as one can get for the late 1930s/ 1940s sound world. And they certainly don't make them like this anymore.
Brilhart Ebolins are increasingly hard to find these days, but if you can get your hands on one with a four digit serial number and an original facing, they are very special. My live album - "Bootlegs from the Bop Stop" - was made on a four digit Brillie, which was my main gigging mouthpiece for over a decade.
Most importantly, perhaps, they were designed with jazz and dance band playing in mind - not for the classical market. This makes them indispensable nearly a century later.
