Piatt Band Instrument Repair

     Mouthpiece Planet is the new home of Piatt Band Instrument Repair, which is quite simply a small repair shop in a garage setup for myself to practice my passion of band instrument repair.  It has been a dream of mine for many years to have my own shop with as few road blocks as possible preventing me from doing good work.  This shop is an extension of myself and like myself I plan to continuously build and improve upon it.

     My name is Zack and I began tinkering with instruments as a kid in band.  My mother picked up a few instruments at flea markets and yard sales in various states of disrepair.  Some of my early repairs were pretty bad, but each one taught me something new.  I attended Western Iowa Tech continued making mistakes and learning.  Mark, the instructor was incredibly patient and encouraged us to explore and experiment with all aspects of instrument repair.  I started as someone with almost no experience operating the most basic tools and graduated in 2012 feeling like I could fix anything, instrument or not.  My first job was at the countries largest repair shop and I quickly discovered that I still had a lot to learn.  I spent two years developing my skills and learning from the many techs that worked there before taking a job at smaller company closer to my hometown.  At that point I was very excited about my new job but I think I already knew that I wanted my own shop someday.  I also wanted to build my own clarinet and would still like to do that one day.  That job was where I repaired for the next 8 years.  While I was there I worked on most types of instrument but more importantly a performed a greater variety of repairs, not just rentals but also customer, school, and pro work.  My specialization and primary interest had been clarinets and saxophones from an early point in my career, but I've always tried to nurture my other skills.  During my time at that job I started tracking my ideas and after trying to select a new bass clarinet mouthpiece without a lot of time or money Mouthpiece Planet was born in 2019.  As soon as the Covid lockdown cleared up in 2020 we began looking for our first property with the criteria being that she liked the house and I had a place for a repair shop.  There was a house that caught our eye long before we were ready to buy but it was far too expensive.  We looked at houses for a few months but none of them really worked for us.  One garage was falling apart, another was missing a roof and had a 30+ foot tree growing out of it.  The price slowly dropped on the overpriced house and 2020 was kind to us financially speaking so we made an offer and after some drama it eventually became ours.  My wife was pretty busy with grad school and when I asked her what my first major project on the house should be she said that she didn't care, so I started on the garage.  In 2022 I quit my repair job to make more money and have a shorter commute working for a gas station chain.  I continued building Mouthpiece Planet and working on my garage until the fall of 2023 when we had our first child and I finally repaired my first couple of instruments in my still uncompleted garage shop.  I may never fully finish working on my garage shop or start fixing up the house, but am more excited about my repair career than ever and love working on my pile of broken horns that my mother and I have created.  I now plan to slowly bring on customer repairs and grow Piatt Band Instrument Repair where the goal remains simple, do good work.  One day we may be making instruments or have a team of technicians.  The future is unclear but as long as I'm doing good work I think I will be happy.

     Like most things in my life this website is a work in progress.  Eventually an online system will be built to complete repairs via mail for customers willing to ship to us.  But for now feel free to contact me at customerservice@mouthpieceplanet.com if you have any interest in Piatt Band Instrument Repair.  We are located in central Pennsylvania and would love to help you.