Al Almont???

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DakoJack
Posts: 137
Joined: Apr 17, 2018

by DakoJack »

Does anyone own an Al Almont or know anything about them?

They seem very interesting just in that they were apparently hard to get and made of Sterling Silver?!?! I ran across them while doing this pod on Glenn Miller (shameless plug lol) and definitely want to dig deeper and wonder if any are still around.

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BGuttman
Posts: 7368
Joined: Mar 22, 2018

by BGuttman »

Almont was best known as a custom mouthpiece maker. Sort of like Curry, Griego, Hammond, etc. His most famous customer was Tommy Dorsey. Dorsey had a very small mouthpiece made by Almont to help his upper register. Dorsey used to give these things out to his band (I'd hate to have to play 4th on one of them). I believe Schilke modeled his 42 on one. Yes, Almont offered his mouthpieces in solid silver, but I think he also offered brass -- solid silver would be well beyond the means of most players.
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Doug_Elliott
Posts: 4155
Joined: Mar 22, 2018

by Doug_Elliott »

I don't remember ever seeing any actual history of Almont. It's well known that Dorsey played on one. I have a couple of brass mouthpieces that I was told were copies of Almonts, but that's all I know. The outside shape is like a Giardinelli.
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Matt_K
Posts: 4809
Joined: Mar 21, 2018

by Matt_K »

Brassark has a blog about it (sort of):

http://www.brassark.com/journal.html

Looks like Noah may have acquired one between one of the posts and the subsequent one.