Model:  Saxworks ‘David Sanborn’

Sax:  alto

Material:  silverite

Chamber: medium

Baffle: high

Description:  The similarity to Dukoff D8 pieces is shown in the lower pictures (left: Dukoff, right: Saxworks). David Sanborn and Candy Dulfer play Saxworks mouthpieces.

The following text and photos are published with permission from Joel N. Harrison, owner of Saxworks.

“I am Joel Harrison, a Silicon Valley based mechanical engineer and amateur sax hack with a background that includes the study of mechanical vibrations. I met sax player John Purcell in 1989 after an introduction from a mutual friend. At the time John was a New York City based sax musician who besides his own recording and performing career had a long professional relationship with David Sanborn. He would periodically help with the setup of Dave's saxes, mouthpieces, ligatures and reeds to meet Dave's extreme sax performance requirements.

John had an interesting perspective on the mechanics and acoustics of the saxophone. While in his early 20's he was diagnosed with a non-malignant throat tumor larger than a marble that he believed was caused by "growling" on the sax in rock-n-roll bands. After surgical removal of the tumor, John had a difficult recovery period with regard to playing the sax. He realized that to play competitively he had to learn how to get more sound out of a sax with less air. After years of passionate experiments he developed a wonderful intuitive sense of what was really important for the sax sound and more than achieved complete recovery as demonstrated by his numerous recording dates with Jack De Johnette, the World Saxophone Quartet and many others.

When I met John I owned and operated a computerized machine shop which manufactured prototype parts for high technology companies using computer controlled (CNC) milling machines. John would visit me in California every three or four months. During each visit John would setup my sax equipment and give me sax sound lessons. I was astonished that my sound improved much more from his visits than I could achieve with practice alone.

As an example of one trip, I played three notes and John said "Stop. Let me see your front teeth." He correctly diagnosed that my mouthpiece was mostly contacting one tooth and not evenly on both front teeth. After the dental repair of my left front tooth cap, both of my front teeth were able to evenly contact my mouthpiece. Not only was my sound much better the painful search for playable reeds was greatly reduced thanks acting on John's advice.

In the early 1990's Dave Sanborn had a mouthpiece problem. He had a particular metal Dukoff that played very well but it was wearing out. He tried many other individual mouthpieces but could not find one that played well enough. Saxworks was formed by John and myself with the goal to make a mouthpiece that Dave wanted to play that could be repeatably manufactured. We carefully made numerous mouthpiece measurements and sent samples to a lab to analyze the metal composition. After many design iterations we were ready for production.

Our manufacturing process started with cylindrical solid castings poured at a local foundry. The bore, shank and bite plate cavity were computer CNC machined to close to the final dimensions.

The next manufacturing step was revolutionary in the history of mouthpiece manufacturing. Baffle and tone chamber features that could be reached from inside the bore were machined using an electrical discharge machining (EDM) process using a collection of carbon electrodes to burn the required shape into each mouthpiece. This is the same process used to create molds for plastic parts manufacturing. A batch of forty mouthpieces at a time were produced in about 24 hours at a local EDM shop. This process produced not only very precise internal features but also resulted with much better alignment between the inside and outside features than has be achieved by a single piece blank casting process.

After the bite plate epoxy was poured into its machined cavity and cured the rest of the mouthpiece was CNC machined using four axes. The outside was hand polished and the facing was finished using a custom built facing machine. The mouthpiece was marked using laser engraving.

One of John's passions was the study and design of sax ligatures. During this period of our common sax journey we developed several ligature concepts. The seven finger tightened ligature rings for the Saxworks mouthpiece was the best ligature design we had at the time.

Hundreds of Saxworks mouthpieces were manufactured and sold in the US by Joe Sax and by a distributor in Japan. The original company Saxworks, Inc., was closed by the end of 1994 as I also exited the CNC machining business.  In the fall of 2009 I have reopened Saxworks with new products.

The photo below shows several steps in the manufacturing process. From left to right: The top of the blank before EDM, the bottom of the blank after EDM, Finished CNC machining, hand finishing, mouthpiece with reed and ligature rings, and cap.”

On the left is another Saxworks alto mouthpiece modeled after a Dukoff, an exact replica of the mouthpiece David Sanborn used. Only about 200 of these mouthpieces were produced which makes these mouthpieces difficult to find and highly sought after.

www.sax-works.com