Matt Marantz

So cool to have Ravi Coltrane over to the pad today to work on 3 Otto Link tenor mouthpieces for him- The goal was to get him all set with his gear for a recording session tomorrow. Ravi is one of the kindest & most generous guys I’ve met in music. A very uplifting dude. During the process we both played & tried a bunch of different ligatures, mouthpieces, combinations of both, and I learned some things & became aware of some gear I didn’t know about before, too. Second pic is the pieces I refaced for him last night before we tweaked the tip sizes a little more this evening. Always a pleasure to get to do any mouthpiece work for this wonderful musician & person.

Tip & table work is where you really feel the difference in the way a mouthpiece responds. It’s important to be very precise and to be able to do it the same exact way every time. There are many good and different ways to do the tip work. I tend to prefer slim but reasonably substantial rail shapes and a very flat baffle right behind the tip rail with dropped corners at the baffle sidewall junctions. The table must be absolutely flat. To me that is non-negotiable and you would be surprised how many mouthpieces are being made with non-flat tables. I won’t give away my entire formula but I’ll just say that when you get this part right and pair it with the type of response curve setup they were using on late 50’s & early 60’s New York Meyers, all your mouthpiece problems fade away… This is another quick batch of @melissaaldanasax custom Aldana HR’s and custom Slant Legacy pieces headed out to players in Serbia, Chicago, New Jersey, and Germany. Thanks, guys! Hope you enjoy.

These are headed out to players all over America, and a few of them will also jet overseas. I wish I could jet overseas right now! Next up though, another round of Marantz Double Ring Legacy metal tenors & Aldana HR tenors…

Great to have the renowned Lew Tabackin over for mouthpiece refacing today. This man was around to play with Elvin Jones, Joe Henderson, Philly Joe Jones, all the greats. I enjoyed the bit of history I got to experience by speaking with him today. We worked on two vintage Florida No Usa .112” Links for him and I believe he was happy by the end.

Incredible day yesterday at @robertsmusic in Providence, Rhode Island! Marantz Custom Mouthpieces is proud to announce Robert’s Music as a new regional dealer for the metro Providence/Boston areas. We appeared alongside other saxophone & saxophone equipment manufacturers like Conn-Selmer, P. Mauriat, Eastman Saxophones, and Yamaha with clinics presented by Jerry Bergonzi, Noah Preminger, and some of Providence’s finest sax players. I was there doing refacings & product demos that were booked solid from 10am-5pm straight! Never had more than a 5 minute break all day, but it was a fantastic experience and I’m so grateful for the chance to have connected with so many fine saxophonists over the course of the weekend. My products will continue to be available at Robert’s Music, so if you didn’t get the chance to try them out and you live nearby, you can still go check them out anytime! The staff and owners of Robert’s Music impressed me with the level of knowledge & dedication they show- It’s no wonder they are so successful! They’ve created an atmosphere of warmth and welcome and I am proud to have my stuff there in the display cases next to other fine products! The Aldana II, the official mouthpiece of @bluenoterecords recording artist @melissaaldanasax was a huge splash and if the size you wanted is out of stock after the event, don’t worry, they’ll have more back in stock soon!

Providence & Boston area saxophone peeps- I will be a guest technician at @robertsmusic in West Warwick all day this Saturday March 28th to celebrate Robert’s becoming an official dealer for Marantz Custom Mouthpieces. We will be offering 1/2 price refacings of any mouthpieces you’d like to bring by for me to look at, and I will have a whole set of Marantz Slant Legacy tenor, Double Ring Legacy tenor, LaModerna soprano HR, NY Legacy alto HR, and of course the @melissaaldanasax signature mouthpiece the Aldana II HR which was just released this week. Come on down, say hi, try out a piece, and buy one for yourself in person this weekend at Robert’s Music. And if the mouthpieces aren’t enough of a draw for you, we’ll have 2 of America’s finest tenor saxophonists on tap as well for clinics: Mr. Noah Preminger and Mr. Jerry Bergonzi. Forget about it! Or, preferably, don’t forget about it!

Little taste from our concert at @zigzagjazzclub "Old Folks" by Willard Robison Also we are looking forward to playing tonight at the Kölner Phillarmonie / 8pm - @koelnerphilharmonie

I am glad to introduce the Aldana II, the latest revision of the signature custom mouthpiece of @melissaaldanasax made by Marantz Custom Mouthpieces. Made to-order, these are now available in most common sizes. Revision II enhances the base design of the Marantz Slant Legacy with a longer, higher, and flatter baffle angle combined with a slightly smaller chamber size. The combination of these two parametric changes also raises floor height, resulting in a mouthpiece design that has a classic jazz tenor vibe & tone but with a V12 engine under the hood; You feel like you have a little extra horsepower on tap when the pedal’s pushed down to the floor. On the flip side, listen to Melissa’s latest record on @bluenoterecords where she plays the Aldana II on a royal flush of ballads with a gorgeous melancholic tone, and you’ll find that it can pretty much follow you anywhere you want to go, musically speaking. Check them out at Marantz Custom Mouthpieces dot com. Link in the comments.

I want to put out there that over the past 15 years I've been studying, practicing, and doing audio recordings & productions of all shapes and sizes. It started out as a mobile recording service where I'd bring the studio to your gig, and eventually that turned into a fully equipped studio in the basement of my duplex in Brooklyn, NYC where some amazingly talented friends and colleagues have brought recording & projects. I'm going to make an effort to start sharing more of the lovely things that have come out of the depths of this space! It's always a privilege to get to work with musicians of this caliber, and I learn a lot each time. These are some clips from two different guitar trio sessions that @alexgoodmanmusic brought over in 2025. The first clip features @rickrosatobass and Mark Ferber on drums, the second features @adamarruda89 drums and @martinnevin on bass. My job is easy when there are musicians like these guys onboard. Both of these sessions became full-length records that Alex is putting out on @outside.in.music , which I'm pretty stoked about. If you are looking for a place to record a project a bit more casually, not on such a high budget, do a jazz recording the old school way with no isolation, or you have material that needs to be mixed or mastered I just want to put out there that I've been doing that type of stuff for a long time now and would be glad to take on some more studio projects! It's a great room for tracking drums, we have a grand piano, and I've got a lot of sweet outboard gear along with SSL analog summing & high end mastering grade conversion among many other toys, so don't be afraid to get in touch if you have a project in mind.

When Ashun Sound Machines asked me to make a couple of videos showcasing their new Diosynth wind synthesizer, I was excited to demonstrate the new axe and I also knew just who to call for the band! I had the opportunity to help create some of the sound patches that ship with the instrument, which was something I'd never been a part of before. That was a great learning experience and a challenge. This great band played several shows together last year in the NYC area and we usually play a mix of each other's original music- This tune is one of mine and it's called Specter. It features my brother @lukemarantz on Rhodes, @thesimonjermyn bass, and @sickwormfacts on drums. Thanks to ASM for having me, for producing these videos, and if anyone has questions about the Diosynth you're welcome to ask! It is in stores now and you can finally buy one of your own.

One of my favorite parts about records I love listening to has always been the production. I used to think about this a lot when I’d listen to my favorite Joe Henderson, Michael Brecker, & Roy Hargrove albums on Verve, then compare them to poorly recorded bootlegs. Just think of what we would have if Dean Beneddetti had had a higher quality modern mobile recording rig to do all those Bird live tapes with, and someone to properly mix it! In 2011 I bought my first 8-channel Motu 8pre on eBay for $300 from some guy in Hawaii and started recording some guitar/voice demos for songs I’d written, some duos around William Paterson with my jazz college friends, and eventually in a last minute pinch, my first recording of a band when my bro from another mo @flatbushbeats needed a demo for his band which I also played in. None of it was good fidelity. Well around 2014 after about a year of research and lusting after it in Sweewater catalogs, those dirty, dirty things 🤣, I bought a Universal Audio Apollo recording & Quad-DSP production interface which was worth more money than I had in my bank account at the time on a 0% 36-month credit card I somehow got approved for and started trying to learn how to make sense of it all. Just like with the mouthpieces I started to work on a few years before that, at first I got really, really disappointed and frustrated (and more than a little bit anxious considering all the money I was now on the hook for) and almost gave up on engineering a few times, but gradually over time and after doing countless live recordings, mixes, re-mixes, and reading practically every page on Gearslutz (OOPS I meant Gearspace, sorry everyone who is not as old as I am to remember when that’s what it was called), things started to make more sense. Over time I got better, and eventually I started to get clients, but none of them have been as special as getting to work for my brother @lukemarantz who released this gorgeous record Echoes on @chilltonerecords with @thesimonjermyn which we recorded, mixed, and mastered together in the studio we built together in Brooklyn. Thanks Luke for having me, and I hope all of you will check out this beautiful new record.

I spent all day yesterday with my good friends at @macsaxaustin developing a new model for my line of professional custom sax mouthpieces. It was a great opportunity for me to dive further into the relationship between baffle and chamber dimensions, really digging deep to understand the synergy between these elusive parameters. In the end, I’m happy to say I think we came up with exactly what I was looking for- Something with a bit more power & edge than the vintage Link designs, but that still retains all the body, warmth, and chestiness in the midrange without accentuating the piercing range of 3~5khz I always find annoying when I listen back to some saxophone recordings. I feel like this one is going to be a grand slam for a lot of players who like my “Legacy series” products but want a bit more punch and power, including me! I couldn’t help but reminisce about all my favorite recordings of Michael Brecker, whose recorded tone I’ve always felt close to and have tried to emulate. I’m not sure what this model will be called yet, but I can tell you that in one form or another, it’ll be available soon as a product on my website Marantz Custom Mouthpieces dot com. In the meantime, I made two soundclips at the end of a 10-hour day of prototyping and trial & error- The first one is the 7* .105”, the second one is 8* .115”, the reed is a @daddariowoodwinds 4S Unfiled. Which one do you prefer?