I just bought a metal mouthpiece on the net and it is a copy made in China of an expensive brand mouthpiece. It's gold plated brass and it cost 50 bucks Australian.

I knew from experience that musical instrument experts are simply people that worship name brands and so I knew there was a good chance that this cheaper brand would be as good or better than the expensive brands regardless of what experts had to say.

I did not know much about metal mouthpieces except that a lot of artists use them and have always done so. And I liked the look of them, they seem more professional.

I read what a few experts had to say about them and usually they said that metal was not really much different than ebonite. And as usual the experts tried to make you buy their brands instead.

Well anyway I got this size 7 mouthpiece called a Huastar and it's about half as thick as an ebonite mouthpiece. It's like a sleek golden bullet. The sound is unbelievably loud and clear compared to the ebonite, and it has far more range than the ebonite.

There really is no comparison and after playing it for a while and then switching to the ebonite it was obvious that the ebonite is a very quiet soft sounding material that is without the lucid qualities of metal. I used to think my ebonite mouthpiece was awesome loud but after using the metal mouthpiece I realized that the ebonite was extremely quiet and soft. I was even thinking about playing my tenor at midnight that night using the ebonite mouthpiece because I thought that it was so quiet in comparison to the metal that the neighbors were sure not to mind.

So if you want a louder clearer sounding mouthpiece go for a metal one, brass preferably. And if you want a silky smooth softer sound like a clarinet then go for the ebonite products.











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Update:
It's been a couple of weeks & I am liking the metal mouthpieces more & more. Last evening I was getting that old jazz sax sound quite easily that I thought only came from very old saxes. It was just a matter of finding the right reed first and it turned out to be a softer one. The metal mouthpieces are a tight fit on the tenor & alto neck corks so I found that if I left the mouthpiece on for a couple of days or more it permanently compressed the cork and made it easier to use. The metal mouthpieces are quite heavy as well so they make the whole sax feel different, and they buzz against your teeth as they vibrate with the reed, so they are intense.

Typically, metal mouthpieces are used for jazz. Pair them up with a good jazz reed and you'll get that coveted loud brassy tone. Ebonites are great for classical pieces, especially since saxophones are supposed to imitate a violin, viola, or cello (depending on what sax you're playing) in classical pieces.

Some people use one mouthpiece for jazz and classical. It might work, but the "purists" usually frown upon it. (I was competing with a Meyer jazz mouthpiece on a classical piece last year and the judges marked me down some points because of it).

I just started sax today ^.^

yeah, I was going to say that the metal mouthpieces are generally used for Jazz. They're wider than the ebonite ones. Its easier to play with a softer reed on the metal mouthpieces and it sounds better... or so my band teacher says ^.^

It is really hard to compare the sound of different materials as other properties of the mouthpiece have a greater effect on tone than the material, actually many experts think the material has little or no effect if the tip opening, facing lenght, chamber size and shape, baffle shape etc. are the same. But as there are no HR(ebonite) and metal pieces with exactly the same dimensions available, it's very hard to make a reliable comparison.

There are dark sounding metal pieces and bright HR pieces, but traditionally metal pieces are used for jazz, so most of them are made brighter than HR pieces.

Metal pieces are more durable and look great but are usually more expensive due to higher manyfacturing cost.

Thanks guys, really informative for us new players.

I like both Metal and Hard Rubber for pop, jazz. I can see how some tip openings more common to metals would be more difficult to manage classical from. As a matter of personal choice and some experience buying varieties I do prefer Meyers, Otto Links, Berg Larsen pieces. But that's not to say that a no name producing from their home lathe can't produce a decent generic. In my opinion, the customer is not as likely to get a product with an optimal tip opening from these sources as from say Meyer or Otto Link both of which produce metal and hard rubber pieces that are very affordable.