The HR* CUSTOM DARK Alto is our premium line of hard rubber saxophone mouthpieces, where the goal is to make the most beautiful sounding and playing piece that we possibly can. In order to achieve this goal we started with the finest material used in hard rubber mouthpieces today, which is our proprietary Chedeville Rubber. CHR (Chedeville Rubber) is a softer purer formula than regular standard hard rubber. This rubber imparts a rich warm sound. Next we created a design that includes rounded sidewalls that add complexity or what I call "moonglow", on top of the core sound. A large round chamber puts the timbre in a warm honey zone and the inspired addition of a thick heavy gold plated brass band on the shank boosts the amount of harmonics in the sound. The two most important parts of a saxophone mouthpiece in my opinion are first, the facing curve and second the baffle. We have applied our twenty years of making mouthpieces on these two areas, which results in a mouthpiece that I have fallen in love with.