There is a lot of business that we turn down and it’s generally when it comes to custom mouthpieces. I work at Edwards during the day and we make our mouthpieces at Griego Sound Inventions which is about 7 minutes away from where I work during the day. I go to GSI in the morning before Edwards, at lunchtime, and after 4:30pm which is when my day ends at Edwards.
This doesn’t allow me a lot of time to do design work which means that I have to do this during family time or on the weekends. My main machinist Chris knows our designs in and out and he produces our mouthpieces every day. In order to do custom mouthpieces it takes about 3 hours of production time away from our machines. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but with all of the models we produce it does hurt production overall.
It’s hard for me to say no to someone, and there are times when a custom alteration is easy and we can accommodate the request within our production without too much disruption.
If we can’t do your custom work I would suggest calling Hammond in Chicago who is set up to do custom work more efficiently than myself.
Greg Black also does a great job, but I’d suggest visiting him rather than ordering by phone in order to get exactly what you are after.
We appreciate your business of course, but there are only so many hours in the day. I’m trying to maintain some balance within my work and personal life, not only for myself but for everyone at GSI that works so hard.