At last, I can blog about these amazing mouthpieces!  I’ve been playing them for two months. Jody Espina sent me one each of the ER50 Custom and ER50 Classic for Christmas and I’ve been using the ER50 Classic as my sole alto classical mouthpiece ever since, but I had to wait for the official release to write about them.

The 50th anniversary of Rousseau Mouthpieces has stimulated Jody’s great gift to classical Alto Saxophonists and their audiences.  

Jody Espina has created the ER50 Classic and ER50 Custom as tributes to Dr. Rousseau using his proprietary Chedeville CHR rubber. I found the Rousseau NC4 mouthpiece already produced by Jody to be neck and neck with the amazing Chedeville RC3* I’ve been playing for a few years…but for me the Chedeville rubber always wins! 

With these two new pieces, Jody now makes the top four classical mouthpieces, in my opinion, and the ER50 Classic is my number one.  It has all the great attributes of the Chedeville sound, but the design including the most gorgeous rails and perfect baffle, along with a heavy gold-plated brass band on the shank yields an even sweeter burnished ringing tone. The pure warm luminous classical tone exemplified by Dr Rousseau is at the heart of this amazing mouthpiece.

It’s simply the most beautiful and flexible classical saxophone mouthpiece of all time.   I studied with two of Dr Rousseau’s favourite students and participated in 10 yearly master classes with him, and every time I put this mouthpiece on, I feel we are honouring his legacy.