GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Saxophone Mouthpiece Replica Review

Today,  I am reviewing the GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros alto saxophone mouthpiece replica, that is an extremely precise copy of a Brian Curry’s favorite Meyer Bros New York alto saxophone mouthpiece. These cool white mouthpieces are made by Brian Curry at GetASax.com.  I have already reviewed the GetASax GS RESO tenor sax mouthpiece as well as the GS FG RESO  and GS SLANT tenor sax mouthpieces which were both copies of two phenomenal Otto Link Reso Chamber tenor saxophone mouthpieces as well as a Slant Signature Otto Link tenor sax mouthpiece.  This is the first GetASax alto saxophone mouthpiece replica that I will be reviewing today and I am looking forward to it……….

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece Replica

Brian Curry is the owner of GetASax and has over 750 saxophone mouthpieces in his collection, so when he says that this is a replica of one of his favorite Meyer Bros NY alto saxophone mouthpieces, we should pay attention.  Original vintage Meyer Bros NY alto saxophone mouthpieces are ridiculously expensive!  I have played two Meyer Bros NY alto mouthpieces through the years and both played exceptionally well for me but to buy a Vintage Meyer can really break your budget because of how expensive they are.  These new GS Meyer Bros NY reproductions from GetASax are only $199 (at the time of this review) which is a great deal for a copy of a world class vintage Meyer Bros NY alto saxophone mouthpiece!

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece Replica next to the Vintage Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece that was replicated

The most notable players that I know that played a Meyer Bros NY alto saxophone mouthpieces are Cannonball Adderley and Sonny Stitt.  I have read the Jim Snidero plays one also and that he actually owns Cannonball’s famous Meyer Bros New York mouthpiece!   Wow!   If that is true, that is pretty awesome!

Here is how Brian at GetASax describes the GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY alto saxophone mouthpiece on his website at GetaSax.com:

Introducing the GS NEW YORK alto saxophone mouthpiece! This is an extremely precise copy of my favorite Meyer Bros New York alto sax mouthpiece from my collection of New York Meyer saxophone mouthpieces.

A great New York Meyer alto mouthpiece just sparkles. The response is clean, warm, and effortlessly free blowing, but centered and with an elusive extra magic to it – even compared to any other version of Meyer.

What you get: The Best Meyer Ever

If you’re not a vintage mouthpiece geek, you probably didn’t know that there are three different mouthpieces that are stamped Meyer Bros New York (not incuding the Tru-Flex or the NYUSA). The first is a rather stubby, fat bodied one. Then this one that the GS NEW YORK copies, with NEW YORK on the same side as MeYeR and ‘medium chamber’ in small font on the table side. The last version has a fatter body again, and has MEDIUM on the same side as MeYeR and NEW YORK on the table side. The following photo makes this clear.

GetASax Photo of Different Versions of the Vintage Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpieces

Some folks prefer the third version. I prefer the second, though we may offer the third version as a GS mouthpiece someday as well. The one we copied has just the right balance of warmth and projection to stand out as the one, holy grail, best-ever (in my opinion anyway) do-it-all alto mouthpiece that you need. There are lots of other great alto mouthpieces on the market, but to my knowledge nobody has actually successfully produced an exact copy of a Meyer Bros NY alto sax mouthpiece like this before, until now.

The GS Bros NY alto sax mouthpieces also all get hand faced by me. That’s the main slow step in getting them to you, but I’m facing them as fast as I can while keeping the facing work perfect. The hand facing is a step that you can’t skip. If you try to make a replica mouthpiece and you don’t replicate a really excellent facing, you might as well not bother. So you get my favorite 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 facing that I’ve played so far, on whichever tip mouthpiece you request. Tips are as follows: 4= .069″   5= .072″   6= .076″   7= .080″ 8= .085″.

The baffle on each tip opening is placed just where Meyer would place it relative to the tip rail and chamber, so each one is a really good copy of the appropriate tip of Meyer Bros. One big advantage we have is that we make these entirely in house, so we can keep improving them until they are perfect. By using biocompatible dental resin and 3D printing for the complex, organic chamber and baffle shapes, we can keep improving and iterating the model until each one is perfect. We spend a LOT of time and effort on that, and I hope that it shows in the quality of mouthpiece and the playing experience that you get.” -Brian Curry 

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece Replica

The GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY alto saxophone mouthpiece is made of white biocompatible dental resin.    Here is what Brian at GetASax writes about the material:

“GS Mouthpieces are made of a premium biocompatible dental resin, and printed at an especially high resolution. You don’t see messy print lines everywhere, because the print is so high quality! This dental resin is designed to be in your mouth, so it’s ideal for a mouthpiece.-Brian Curry

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece Replica

This GetASax GS Meyer Bros NY alto saxophone mouthpiece is a 5 tip opening which measures at .072.  These also come in tip openings of  4= .069″   5= .072″   6= .076″   7= .080″ 8= .085″.  I have also asked to review a 6 and 7 tip opening so will hopefully be able to add sound clips of those to this review in the future as well.

The GetASax GS Meyer Bros NY alto saxophone mouthpiece looks great to the eye.  The tip, rails and table look even, flat and well crafted.  The tip rail and side rails are nice and thin.  The tip rail does not exactly match the modern Rigotti cane reeds I used on this mouthpiece. The mouthpiece tip rail curves down faster on the outside corners than the outside curve of the Rigotti reeds. This causes the Rigotti reeds to hang over the edge just a little bit at the corners if the reed is lined up at the very top of the tip rail.  Brian tells me that they wanted the GS Meyer Bros NY replica to be as close to the original Meyer Bros NY mouthpiece as possible, so they kept the tip rail as close to the original shape as possible.  I imagine the tip shape of reeds has probably changed a little since the original Meyer Bros NY alto sax mouthpieces were made in the 40’s and 50’s..

The baffle of the GetASax GS Meyer Bros NY alto saxophone mouthpiece is a medium rollover baffle. The baffle looks to be about 1/2  an inch before it rolls over and descends down at a greater angle into the medium chamber. The floor of the baffle during the decent has a side to side curve to it.  The baffle travels at an angle down through the chamber of the mouthpiece where it terminates at the beginning of the bore at the end of the chamber.  The roof of the mouthpiece chamber under the table is pretty thick to create the medium chamber size.

The sidewalls are scooped out slightly from where they start near the tip all the way to the medium chamber where the sidewalls angle inwards towards the mouthpiece chamber.

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece Replica

The diameter and beak profile of the GetASax GS Meyer Bros NY alto saxophone mouthpiece feels the same as the diameter and beak profile of a typical hard rubber Meyer alto saxophone mouthpiece.  All of my ligatures that fit comfortably on hard rubber Meyer alto saxophone mouthpieces fit perfectly on the GetASax GS Meyer Bros NY alto saxophone mouthpiece.  For the sound clips below, I used a Vandoren Optimum alto saxophone ligature which I find to be pretty neutral (doesn’t brighten, darken, or color the sound in any way in my opinion)

The weight and consistency of the dental resin feels more substantial than the weight of other materials like Delrin mouthpieces I have reviewed in the past.  As I hold the GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros alto saxophone mouthpiece in my hand, the weight feels similar to a hard rubber saxophone mouthpiece.

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece Replica

The GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros 5 alto saxophone mouthpiece played perfectly with the first Rigotti Gold 3 Light reed that I tried on it.  The GSNY Meyer mouthpiece has a bright and crisp tone to it.  When played softly, the tone is very beautiful and light sounding to my ears.  I loved playing softer ballads on this mouthpiece!  When pushed louder with more air, the tone seems to go from light to a more dense focused core to the tone.  The medium chamber does a great job in focusing the core sound of the mouthpiece and the rollover baffle gives the tone the nice bright crispness I describe.

The intonation was as to be expected on the GS NY Meyer alto mouthpiece with nothing out of the ordinary noticed.  The range of the saxophone was uniform and even in tone from the bottom of the horn to the top.  The low notes didn’t seem as fat and lush as they do when compared to an alto mouthpiece with a larger chamber and larger tip opening but they had a nice tight core to them and sub-toned nicely.

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece Replica

The GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros 5 alto saxophone mouthpiece sounded killer on bebop lines in the style of Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley or Phil Woods.  I played a few old melodies from the Charlie Parker Omnibook Vol. 2 and the GS NY Meyer sounds right at home while playing those old standards and “Bird” lines.

The GS NY Meyer Bros mouthpiece has a 5 tip opening which is .072 and because of that, I felt like I could only get so much volume out of the smaller tip opening.  I usually play alto mouthpieces with a slightly more open tip and feel like I can push more air through the larger tip opening to produce more volume.  (I have asked Brian @ GetASax if he could send me a 6 & 7 tip opening to review as well).  The GS Meyer Bros NY 5 has plenty of volume for a jazz gig but I’m looking forward to trying the 6 & 7 to see how much more air I can blow through them.

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece Replica

The articulation on the GetASax NY Meyer Bros alto sax mouthpiece was immediate, crisp and clean sounding to me.  It could also handle flowing fast bebop lines with a more legato type tonging really well.  The responsiveness of the GetASax NY Bros Meyer alto mouthpiece made it very easy to manipulate and mold the tone also.   I loved how immediately responsive the reed felt when deciding to add vibrato or bends to the notes.

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece Replica

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece Replica

On the four sound clips below, I try to give a good range and variety of saxophone sounds and textures so that you can hear the GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros alto saxophone mouthpiece perform in different styles.  The number of sound clips is probably overkill, but I liked different elements of each clip and instead of cutting stuff out just decided to post all four clips.

The first clip is my usual mix of the random Steve Neff lines that I usually play on these mouthpiece review clips with some old melodies from standards thrown in here and there.

The second clip was recorded a few days later and I thought it was also a great clip so wanted to include it as well.   Within the bebop lines are some melodies and lines from the Charlie Parker Omnibook Vol. 2 by Hal Leonard (this is an amazing book of Bird solos by the way!).  It’s interesting that this is the same reed and was recorded the same exact way but the tone sound very different to me from clip one.

The third and fourth clip are a sampling of what the GS NY Meyer Bros alto sax mouthpiece sounds like with some reverb added.  I like adding a sample with reverb to the clips so listeners can hear how the mouthpiece might sound in a more lively room.  I love how the GS NY Meyer Bros mouthpiece sound with this added reverb.

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece Replica

In my opinion, the GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros alto saxophone mouthpiece is a great alto saxophone mouthpiece for those of you looking for an alto mouthpiece along the lines of the classic vintage Meyer mouthpiece sound.  I think Brian Curry & GetASax has done a great job in recreating a classic mouthpiece with this new line of GS Meyer Bros NY replicas.  This mouthpiece certainly reminds me of the vintage Meyer Bros NY mouthpiece I tried out years ago.

If you are interested in the GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros alto saxophone mouthpiece you can purchase one from Brian at GetaSax.com for a very reasonable price in my opinion.  Honestly, I would have loved to have the choices these GetaSax mouthpieces offer back when I was in high school!  I remember my only option back then, was going to the local music store and trying out the few Meyer mouthpieces they had in stock hoping to find a great one.   I was always disappointed……. It blows my mind that you can now order an exact replica of a great vintage Meyer and have it delivered right to your door.

Brian has said he has about 750 saxophone mouthpieces in his collection and that he would put 20 of those mouthpieces in his “holy grail” category.  He is hoping to release reproductions of many of these “holy grail” saxophone mouthpieces in the near future which I am very excited about! (I have three Freddie Gregory Mark II tenor mouthpiece replicas sitting on my desk to review as I type this).  Stay tuned…….

If you try a GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros alto saxophone mouthpiece or have any thoughts, comments or questions on this review,  I would love to hear what you think in the comments below. Thanks,   Steve

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece-Rigotti Gold 3 Light Reed-No Effects Added

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece-Rigotti Gold 3 Light Reed-No Effects Added

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece-Rigotti Gold 3 Light Reed-Reverb Added

GetASax GS NEW YORK Meyer Bros NY Alto Mouthpiece-The Summer Knows Melody-Rigotti Gold 3 Light Reed-Reverb Added