Custom Schilke / Bach / Laskey Symphonic Modular Mouthpiece Set - Keith Johnson’s Personal Mouthpiece

A remarkable custom symphonic trumpet mouthpiece set. Custom made mouthpiece for symphony player Keith Johnson. These belonged to a retired professional trumpet player who was a close friend of Keith Johnson’s. The Schilke Rim and Schilke Underpart were custom made and cut by Scott Laskey himself in the 1980s. The modified Bach 1B underpart was custom modified to fit Johnson’s existing rim.  

Included is:

• Schilke #1 Rim, Gold Plated
• Schilke 1B Underpart / 24 Throat / 75 Backbore
• Bach 1B Underpart / 25 Throat / 25 Backbore

Schilke #1 Rim: The rim was cut by Scott Laskey (the same man who founded the Laskey mouthpiece company) in the 1980s. He was a close friend of Keith Johnson’s, and did this custom job on the rim. The rim was cut from a Schilke 1B blank. It was given Bach threads, and perfectly fits both underparts. It was gold plated by us for extra comfort. It is the equivalent of a 1 rim.

Schilke 1B Underpart: This is the other half of the mouthpiece. This was cut by Scott Laskey, and was custom stamped “JOHNSON.” It has been left in the original silver plate. It is also made with Bach threads. This underpart is the equivalent size of a 1B, with a symphonic 24 throat and 75 backbore.

Bach 1B Underpart: This was cut to fit the rim cut for Johnson by Laskey. It was made from a Vincent Bach 5B mouthpiece, which was then opened up and expanded to a 1B by Robert Osmun, who is a renowned mouthpiece specialist based in Massachusetts. It perfectly fits the Schilke 1 rim, as it has Bach threads as well. This underpart has a 25 throat and a 25 backbore. 

This setup is absolutely outstanding for symphony trumpet playing. Having these mouthpieces made like this today would likely cost close to $1000. This is as good as you can possibly get. The mouthpieces were taken care of very well by their past owners, and were used in hundreds of professional symphony performances across the world. The mouthpieces have mild insertion marks and faint scratching. Nothing more than small nicks. Absolutely outstanding. This is an unimaginably rare and unique mouthpiece combination, which is absolutely sure to impress whoever plays it.

From ITG on Keith Johnson:

”In 1996 UNT awarded Johnson the title of Regents Professor, and in the fall of 2011 he was named a University Distinguished Professor of Teaching. Prior to his position at UNT, he was Professor of Trumpet at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. He performed with the Dallas Opera, the Fort Worth Symphony, the New Hampshire Music Festival and the Sundance Brass Quintet. He played Baroque trumpet with the Dallas Bach Society, Fort Worth Early Music, the Orchestra of New Spain, the Texas Baroque Trumpet Ensemble, the San Francisco Bach Choir and Orchestra, Texas Camerata and the New York Baroque Orchestra. He performed with the symphony orchestras of Dallas, Shreveport, Kansas City, Cape Town, the Mexico City Philharmonic, the Mexico City Symphony, the Solistas de Mexico, and the Orchestra of the Mineria Festival (Mexico City). He presented clinics and recitals at more than seventy-five universities and conservatories throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Romania, Italy, England, The Netherlands, Australia, Brazil and South Africa.

He was the author of two highly acclaimed books, The Art of Trumpet Playing (Iowa State University Press/Gore Publications) and Brass Performance and Pedagogy (Prentice-Hall), and he published more than forty articles on brass playing as well as a method book entitled Developing the Upper Register. His students have held playing and teaching positions in orchestras, bands and universities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Sweden, South Africa, Italy, England, France, Spain, Germany and Romania. In the summer of 2013, he was presented a Distinguished Service Award by the New Hampshire Music Festival for fifty years of service as co-principal trumpet of the Festival Orchestra.

Johnson was a graduate of the University of North Texas and the University of Illinois. His teachers included William Scarlato (Shreveport Symphony), John Haynie (University of North Texas), Haskell Sexton (University of Illinois), Vincent Cichowicz (Chicago Symphony), Armando Ghitalla (Boston Symphony) and Arnold Jacobs (Chicago Symphony).

He served as Chairman of the Board of Governors for the Emmett Waits Canterbury Foundation at Texas Woman's University and the University of North Texas, and he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Genesis Foundation of the Republic of South Africa.

Johnson was a prominent member and leader of the International Trumpet Guild (ITG) and was a featured clinician at ITG Conferences on numerous occasions. He served as a member of the Board of Directors of the International Trumpet Guild, and for eight years was music review editor for the ITG Journal. He co-hosted the 1988 ITG Conference at the University of North Texas and was selected by the International Trumpet Guild to receive the Award of Merit for service to the trumpet profession at the ITG Conference in 2012.“