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BRAHMA Tenor Mouthpiece

OR
SKU: 47710882-1-1-1

$775.00

Description

Our ALL NEW super-full-bodied small chamber mouthpiece!

The BRAHMA uses the best features of vintage mouthpieces like Berg Larsen & Lawton with their small chamber & flat side-walls, but updates them with Theo’s new design technologies, which is why you will notice the interior looks quite different (more in-depth descriptions on the DESIGN & INNOVATION tab above):

  1. Twisted-Wall™

    Twisted-Walls™: Flat-sidewall that ‘twists’ into the chamber.

  2. Wave-Baffle™: The baffle is shaped in the form of a sine-wave, adding fullness and sparkle to the sound.
  3. Theo’s proprietary “bullet” chamber: A unique ‘elongated-oval’ shape is used to transition from baffle to chamber.
  4. Shark-Gill-Baffle™ The arced lines you see on the baffle.  Patented by Theo Wanne.
  5. Click to View

    Small-Stadium-Chamber™ Shape like a Football Stadium, the Small-Stadium-Chamber™ gives tremendous projection.

  6. Shark-Gill Chamber™ The indented lines on the chamber walls create a bigger sound. Patented by Theo Wanne.
  7. Elliptical Window  Efficiently focuses the airstream into the mouthpiece.

These features allow the BRAHMA to do-it-all.   From ballads to rock & roll, this is the most versatile mouthpiece we make.

We used the name BRAHMA mouthpiece many years ago on another mouthpiece. However this design is completely new. The two models have little in common, except for the cool name!

Manufactured by Theo Wanne™ using the highest technology in the market for both consistency and accurate reproduction of the new design.  The BRAHMA is available in 24k Gold Plate with our built-in liberty ligature, and in premium hard rubber. You will notice the hard rubber version is the same price as the metal.  This is because we use pure hard rubber with no accelerants, additives or carbon black.  It is pure, like the vintage hard rubber from the 1930’s through 50s.   Such pure hard rubber is more expensive than the brass and gold plating combined.

SOUND

  • Great for almost every musical style including Ballads, Jazz, and Rock & Roll.
  • Massive sound, while also being ‘dark’ and vintage sounding at the same time.
  • Truly a unique sound/design maximizing the potential of airflow. There’s nothing else like it!

DESIGN

  • Radical, proprietary Small-Stadium-Chamber™ and patented Shark-Gill™ chamber.
  • Flat side walls and uniquely shaped roll-over baffle.
  • Crafted to the highest accuracy in the history of saxophone mouthpieces.
  • Designed by Theo Wanne, the foremost expert on the design and manufacturing of vintage and new mouthpieces.

DETAILS

“You’re on a roll these days! The BRAHMA is a great piece, and it brings back that old Berg feeling for me, but with tons of improvements and modernity! I think I´ll be able to get a very good sound from it. A bit of a coming home feeling for me, actually. Exciting!!” – Jan Garbarek (Keith Jarrett, George Russell, Grammy Nominee, 31 Internationally Acclaimed Albums)

“The BRAHMA tenor is no joke. It’s Fu#*ing amazing!It’s got all the tonal spectrum your digging for. You can soft and go Otto Link-y on it or Dig Deep into it.And the high G is just coming right out.” – Brad Rambur (Nashville’s 2010 Best New Artist)

“I LOVE this mouthpiece!! Effortless to play, nice and even throughout the register,  super easy to control the upper realm of the sax, fat bottom end. Phat Meaty – dark RnB vibe – powerful – clean – rich.  Such a killer mouthpiece.” – Alisha Pattillo (www.alishapattillo.com)

“The BRAHMA is effortless, even, rich—the ultimate qualities of a great mouthpiece—and this mouthpiece has them all.  I think I can finally stop spending money trying to find the holy grail tenor mouthpiece TODAY! Thank YOU!!!   This is the mouthpiece I have been looking for!”  –  Quang Thang (www.columbusax.com)

“The BRAHMA is so easy to sound good on!!!!   I really recommend trying it!  – Pat Belliveau

“That’s like my vintage Berg, but way more centered. Big sound all the way from the bottom to the top.” – Ethan King

“Nice fat full bodied tone like you’re smoking on a fine cigar.   That’s my favorite mouthpiece!  It’s FAT!” – Ricardo Barrios

“I more than like it… I love it!  This is my favorite one, just the right amount of resistance.” – Terence Farmer

“This is the one, man! Wow!” – Jarred Armstrong

I really love the Brahma. It just goes! – James King (Fitz & the Tantrums, Lady Gaga, Jeff Goldblum & the Mildred Snizter Orchestra)

The Brahma is revelatory. I can do things I don’t normally do with it! It’s just does whatever I want with the air I put into it – Karl Hunter (Big Bad Voodoo Daddy)

“OMG, Theo! You’ve captured the magic of the best Doc Tenney faced Berg Larsen and taught us all a masterclass of perfection! Refined warmth, thick core, stunning dynamic range, beautiful sound, exceptional tuning . . . ! The Brahma is the mouthpiece for me! Thank you!”Benjamin Allen Mouthpieces

My first experience with a small chamber mouthpiece and I like its punch and facility in the upper register” – Valerie M. 

 

Design & Innovation Features of the BRAHMA Tenor Mouthpiece:

Twisted-Wall™

1. Twisted-Walls™:  We start with a flat side-wall, which mean that the inner walls (inner-sides) of the mouthpiece are vertically flat. The flat side-wall was made popular by Berg Larsen and Brilhart mouthpieces in the 1940s.  The benefit to this design is it creates a nice focused sound.  The BRAHMA is unique though, as the inner-walls extend back into the chamber in a ‘twist’, not straight like the Berg and Brilhart mouthpieces

2. Wave-Baffle™: The baffle is the interior part of the mouthpiece that the airstream first hits, which makes it very important. The Wave-Baffle™ is similar to a traditional roll-over baffle, however it is shaped in the form of a sine-wave. The sine-wave shape is a combination of convex and concave shapes formed in a highly specific pattern.  To accurately form this area, we must precision machine it.   It is not possible to accurately reproduce by hand.  You will hear both fullness and sparkle simultaneously in the sound, due to this specially shaped baffle.

3. Theo’s proprietary “bullet” chamber: The term ‘bullet chamber’ has been used for years in describing Berg Larsen mouthpieces. It is the transition of the back of the baffle into the chamber. We use a unique ‘elongated-oval’ shape to enhance the already focused, yet full, sound. While it looks simple, the shape is actually highly sculpted.  You will see many variations of this design across the Theo Wanne™ mouthpiece lineup.  We ‘dial in’ each model with this feature.

4. Shark-Gill Baffle™:  The arced lines you see on the baffle of the mouthpiece is the shark-gill-baffle™, which is patented by Theo Wanne so you will only find this innovative feature on our mouthpieces, or those we license it to. And yes, the shark-gills-baffle™ gets its name because it looks like the gills of a shark! The shark-gill-baffle™ works on the physics principle of ‘turbulent flow’, similar to the effect of dimples on a golf ball, which allow the golf ball to travel further through the air. The golf ball dimples suck air behind the golf ball, so the golf ball does not ‘drag’ an air pocket along with it while it travels. In a similar way, the shark-gill Baffle™ disturbs the airflow, removing air pockets in the mouthpiece/neck/saxophone.  The airstream can then flow closer to the inner walls of the mouthpiece and instrument. The result is much greater dynamics, from soft-to-loud, and an overall ‘fuller sound’.

5. Small-Stadium-Chamber™ The open area, under the reed, inside the mouthpiece is the chamber. Theo’s small-stadium-chamber gets its name from its shape, which is reminiscent of a Football Stadium. The small size gives tremendous projection, but the unique stadium shape fills out the sound, so it has an unheard of width & breadth. Talk about a HUGE sound!

6. Shark-Gill Chamber™ The indented lines you see on the chamber sides is our patented Shark-Gill Chamber™.   It works in a similar way to the Shark-Gill Baffle™ allowing the chamber to fill with air more efficiently than a standard small chamber. Hence you get the fullness of sound and increased dynamics simultaneously. The result is an overall bigger sound with increased dynamics. And yes, the Shark-Gill Chamber™ gets its name because it looks like the gills of a shark!

7. Elliptical Window  The window, the open area under the reed, is wide, and uses Theo’s proprietary elliptical shape. This allows more air to enter into the small chamber giving fullness to the focused sound.

 

The BRAHMA Tenor Mouthpiece Story

The BRAHMA tenor saxophone mouthpiece has been a long time coming! Ever since I started custom making saxophone mouthpiece 30 years ago, at least for tenor sax, my focus has been large chamber mouthpieces in the Otto Link style because Ijust loved the fat lush sound a large chamber can get. However, as we were developing the GAIA 4 and LAKSHMI models, the Stadium Chamber™ was born, and this changed everything. We discovered that the Stadium Chamber™ could be made into a small chamber, and still get a big, lush sound, too! Hence, development on the new BRAHMA small Stadium Chamber started.

Many of you know of the vast collection of vintage mouthpiece I have acquired over the years, so we started with the framework of the BRAHMA model from my favorite vintage Berg Larsen. That Berg is a long table Slant Signature 110/1 SMS.

Starting there, we added the Small-Stadium Chamber™ and our Patented Shark Gills™. We also developed some brand new technologies like the Wave-Baffle™ and Twisted-Inner-Side-Walls™. More information about those can be found on the DESIGN & INNOVATION tab. The goal was a core sound similar to the Berg Larsen, but also the fullness of sound one can get from a large chamber.

Matt Ambrose (Lead Programmer and Machinist), Thomas Harris (Production Lead), Bryan Vance (Chief Operation Officer) and myself crafted 78 unique prototypes over the course of two years. After rigorous testing, in-house and with our professional endorsers, we are confident we have a small chamber mouthpiece that rivals our large chamber models. Nothing in the market is quite like this mouthpiece, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

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