After Joe went home, I went to New York City this past Tuesday for another round of mega mouthpiece testing. On my way into Lincoln Center, I saw Dave Taylor talking on his cell and went over to chat for a bit. It’s always great to see Dave.

Once the orchestra went on a lunch break, we started in on the mouthpieces. Amanda Stewart stuck around to lend us her ears. When rehearsal started back up, I headed out for lunch and ran into Weston Sprott. We had a great time talking shop/life/training.

After lunch it was back to the much improved Juilliard School for more mouthpiece work. This time, Dave Finlayson joined us and we quickly nailed down the winners and losers. After taking tons of notes, it was back to the airport for dinner and plane ride home.

We’re now moving on to other mouthpiece sizes. If all goes according to plan, we’ll be unveiling some new features that have never been offered in any mouthpiece line. It’s a ton of work, but very rewarding. Thanks for your patience!

We’re making progress and hope to launch in June (my hope anyways). I’m learning a lot as we go through the R&D and that’s always the fun of it.

Thanks for being patient, we’re working on it. The wait will be worth it.

If you need something more quickly feel free to give me a call at 262 949 1924 to place your order. Best time is 12-1 central time or 4:30-6pm central time due to my day job at Edwards. If I don’t pick up please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.

Next up is small bore mouthpieces. Tuba mouthpieces are done in Deco and Nouveau blanks. Call to order these. It’s gonna take some work to get all the content done for the website. Sorry for the inconvenience tuba guys.

Since I am going to be at Midwest, Beth Griego (my delivery specialist) is going home to visit family in New Mexico with our newest addition Ava.

Due to this schedule any order placed before December 11th will be shipped out before the 16th.

Any order placed after December 11th will not ship out until the week of December 28th.

I am traveling to see family in New Mexico after the Midwest Band Convention.

Have a great holiday season and I look forward to working with all of you in 2010.

Personally I grew up playing on silver plate and so I continue to. I like the feeling it provides at the point of contact and know that gold plate leaves me feeling a bit insecure with the anchor point.

While I do not think that either plating changes the sound enough to quantify. I do think it is worth taking note of which surface your face prefers to come in contact with. It could be your changing mouthpieces due to the plating choice and not the mouthpiece itself. Maybe…

I wanted to mention that you don’t have to have a PayPal account in order to purchase from our site. Once you click the checkout button, you’ll be directed to a page where you can log in to PayPal (on the right) or pay by credit card.  The latter option is much less obvious, so simply look for the following:

Use your credit card or bank account (where available). Continue

If you’d rather conduct your transaction over the phone, please call us at (262) 949-1924.

Nouveau Model

Right now we’re only offering a few mouthpieces in the Nouveau blank, but we will eventually offer every model in our newest design.  It won’t be all at once, so please be patient with us.

Tuba Models

You’ll also notice a lack of tuba mouthpieces on the new site. We temporarily removed them as our inventory was really low. We’re also going to make a few modifications to the line before we re-release them. They should go back on sale sometime this summer.

I am excited about getting the new CNC machine set up so we can add to our existing line. Thanks for all the support over the years.  I’m looking forward to continuing to make great mouthpieces for low brass musicians.

You’ll also notice some new product shots in our gallery. Ron Knaflic has taken some great pics that better show off the leather accessories, in particular. Take a look around and let us know what you think.

Hi, this is Ron Knaflic. This is my first of many blog posts to come for Griego Mouthpieces.

Being one of the original guinea pigs for Christan I have witnessed first- hand the evolution of Griego Mouthpieces and their impact on trombone players. As many of you may know I work as the Production Coordinator for Edwards which is such a broad title and includes fitting trombones and trumpets to players.

I frequently get the question at fitting of “will I need a different mouthpiece?” The answer is always “maybe”. The reason for this is quite simple. The final product (i.e. your sound) is culmination of…

You + Mouthpiece + The instrument = Your overall sound

• You = Body mass, breathe support, oral structure, mental state, sound concept and many more things.
• The mouthpiece = The outside shape, where mass is located, the quality of the machining, and all of the internal shapes and dimensions.
• And then the actual instrument.

Each component needs to be complimentary to get out of the way. If one element changes, others may need to adjust to compensate.

For those of you who are audiophiles will understand that the best sound comes from the right amp, preamp, cables, connectors, crossovers, speakers, the room they are in. The best setup is one that accurately represents the source, the recording.

Sometimes it’s practice or a lesson, sometimes it’a a new horn, and sometimes it’s a mouthpiece.

Okay, the blue containers that we use to ship mouthpieces are perfect for just that, shipping mouthpieces.

Unfortunately, they are not made for daily use.

The foam reacts with your spit and will erode the silver plating. Please use any standard mouthpiece pouch. If you are going to use the blue container remove the foams and use a soft cloth to cover the mouthpiece to protect it from the chemical reaction that can occur.