The original Giardinelli French horn mouthpieces had a great reputation until the early 80’s, when they were completely overhauled and turned into something very different from what they had been. Until that time they had been successful copies of mouthpieces that the top players in New York City and other major eastern cities had been using. Included were copies of mouthpieces of Myron Bloom, James Stagliano, Joseph Singer, Mason Jones and Barry Tuckwell. The Giardinelli “C” pieces were copies of James Chambers’ mouthpiece. Chambers had played with the Pittsburg Symphony under Fritz Reiner for one year after his graduation from Curtis in 1941, then became solo horn of the Philadelphia Orchestra (1942-1946), and finally was solo horn of the New York Philharmonic from 1946-1969. He also served on the faculty of The Julliard School for 42 years.

 

The change in the manufacturing process occurred when Mr. Giardinelli decided he would lengthen the shank of the mouthpiece so that it would be able to fit both American and European receivers. Unfortunately, and not completely understandably, not only the shank wound up being added on to, but the cup section of the mouthpiece was stretched as well. The new blank shapes were almost a quarter of an inch longer than they had been! With the overall length of the mouthpiece distorted in this way the pieces, completely understandably, no longer responded in the same manner.

At this time Mr. Giardinelli was close to the end of his career and steps were already being taken to sell the business. In this climate these issues with the horn mouthpieces were not at the forefront of the priority list for the new owners and so the situation was never rectified.

A year or so later, at one of our very first trade shows exhibiting at the New York Brass Conference, Mr. Giardinelli came by to look over our wares, scant as they were at the time. It was his suggestion that we should  add  the Chambers pieces to our line. He spoke enthusiastically to us about the popularity of the Chambers pieces and strongly suggested that we take them over and assured us that we would be doing so with his blessings. It took us a while before the business grew large enough for us to be in a position to be able to incorporate them into our lines, but his perspicacity and generosity on that day has come back to us many times since.

Our version of the Chambers piece is a copy of the original Giardinelli model in every way (on the shorter, original blank) except for the contour of the rim. The original Giardinelli Chambers rims had sharp edges at all points of the rim.

This is thought to have been due to a lack of precision in the creation of the original cutting tool that was produced to manufacture these mouthpieces at the time. (A ‘cutter’ is a type of form tool that was used to mass produce mouthpieces in the days before CNC equipment.) Nevertheless, this defect did not keep the “Chambers” model form being one of the most popular mouthpieces of its time, and so it became the version that everyone was familiar with.

When we decided to go into production with these pieces we knew that the rim was suspect and therefore went back to the actual mouthpiece that James Chambers had used for a proper rim model. We were lucky enough to have a copy supplied to us at the time by Philip Myers who had this mouthpiece in his possession. Several years later we decided to take these models a step further by making it more adaptable for a greater number of players and offering it in 3 different inner diameters as well as offering greater variety in the bore sizes and cup depths available.The original Chambers mouthpieces were available in 3 different cup depths, but with limited bore sizes offered for each. There was the deep cup, known as the C which was available in bore sizes 1, 4, 8 and 10. There was also the C12 model which had a medium shallow cup and was only available in the #12 bore size. Similarly, there was the C15 which had a shallow cup…again, only available in the #15 bore size. When we took the pieces over we offered the C12 and C15, now known as the CM (for medium) and the CS (for shallow) respectively with a much wider range of bore sizes. We also made all the cup depths available with two new inner diameter sizes making these models extremely adaptable. There is even a wide rim version available in all models.