Ray Noguera remembers Rudy Mück
- taken from email dated 2-28-07 -

I worked with Mike Fiore at Rudy Mück in NYC in 1973. Mike bought or inherited Mück from Rudy's widow.  I'm not sure of when that was.  He ran the mouthpiece business from the 48 St. shop. I later ran the Mück business from my shop in Flushing NY - the Mück.

The business just didn't seem worth all the trouble as we only sold three of four hundred mouthpieces a year at the most.  The bulk of those were sold to a importer in Germany. Mike made all the cups by hand from blanks made by Miller Automatics.  Miller was located in one of the Gretsch buildings in downtown Brooklyn.  Miller was a screw machine shop that produced many blanks and some finished product for the industry. I remember he made the blanks for Giardinelli, Parduba and Jet-Tone among others.

He also at one time produced all the mouthpieces to finish for the Gratz company. Gratz had leased the name for many years.  It was during those years that many of the mouthpieces were made.  The Gratz mouthpieces were different from the Mück made ones and are distinguished by their unique outer shape.  Miller, I believe, is now located in Farmingdale, N.Y.  I'm not sure that they still have any samples or info of the mouthpiece making days.

...and now some more of the history...

I seem to remember Mike telling me that it was Rudy's father that was the instrument maker.  Upon his retirement Rudy went to the mass market trying to capitalize on the name.  Most of the later horns were built in Europe and were a far cry from the hand made NY horns.  Rudy was flamboyant and enjoyed his spirits and lifestyle more than he did work.  I believe that that had something to do with him "leasing" the name to Gratz.

As for the Bach relationship... Mr. Bach was not a great fan of Rudy's. ... To my recollection Rudy had a brother named Frank. Frank was working as a repairman for several NY music stores up into the 80's.

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