My heartfelt condolences go out to Rons family. Ron and I go back a couple of decades. I am so saddened by this news and I wanted to put up a post, and just say thank you for all the great memories. Ron was a wonderful person and always fun to talk to. You could call him up and ask him one question and you may be on the phone for an hour. He loved to talk, and he would share everything with you. He was very real all the time. Conversations would jump from one topic to another and he was very knowledgeable about many things. Ron used to get Babbitt blanks and he would build them up on the inside to get what he wanted. He would make different baffles and add height to the floor with many different combinations, to get the players what they asked for. Over the years of selling mouthpieces as a major part of my living, I was lucky to have owned over 100 of Ron’s pieces. Like any mouthpiece out there, they are not for everybody, but Ron would do his absolute best to get you what you asked for. He was extremely passionate and compassionate. He had his ideas of how to do things and he followed his passion. I greatly appreciate that as I do the same in my life.
Ron started using this orange material called Ultem, and after I heard from many of my friends how much they enjoyed that material in terms of playability and looks, I wanted to try it myself to see what I thought. Needless to say, I have tried many different plastics, carbon fiber, wood, 3-D print, etc., and the orange Ultem is superb. I started offering it in my 10Mfan mouthpiece line as soon as I got the first mouthpiece back, because I knew it was wonderful. Again, I want to thank Ron for trying this material and proving it to be a wonderful material for mouthpieces, and allowing guys like myself to not have to go through the difficult trial and error of inding a great material, because this Ultem is fantastic and I am very grateful.
I’d like to take this moment to thank Ron for all the great conversations that we had, and for the wonderful mouthpieces he made for players all over the world.
Ron, you will be missed!