Al Cass Magic?
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Buck Clayton, Sweets Edison and Roy Eldridge are some of my favorite players to listen to. They all played Al Cass mouthpieces.
What is the magic that these mouthpieces had that worked so well?
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They were made by a man who dedicated his life to all things trumpet and had the ability to refine what aspects of the trumpet he could, resulting in remarkable achievements. I believe that incorporating a considerable amount of weight at the rim may have had an acoustic effect similar to, but perhaps more pronounced than Olds and Bach Megatone, and perhaps Conn, to a lesser degree, which have the weight concentrated at the rear body of the mouthpiece. Try this https://alcassmouthpieces.com/ and this https://trumpetboards.com/topic/358/al-cass-mouthpieces for more info.
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My personal opinion for what it is worth is the only magic in Cass mouthpieces is, they are suited to certain players whose playing style suits the Cass designs.
That is all that mouthpieces really offer and we have the capability to change the way we play to exploit the capabilities of the equipment we use.
Of course rubbish mouthpieces will always be rubbish and create barriers to good playing but all good mouthpieces give us room to develop.
And when we have gone down that road as far as we can and finally hit limitations of our equipment, we can change our equipment to take us further in the direction we want to go.
An ounce of polishing of our abilities is worth a ton of polishing our equipment.
If Cass mouthpieces work for you that is great but I dont believe they are a holy grail for everyone.
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Does anyone out there play one of these currently?
