A principal trombone who needed better tools.

Denis Wick Products began with a player. Denis Wick (1931–2025), born in Braintree, Essex, taught himself the trombone from the age of ten in a Salvation Army band, English Wikipedia says, and joined the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra at 19. After the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra he became principal trombone of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1957, holding the chair until 1988 — a span that included the LSO’s recording of John Williams’s Star Wars score. In Birmingham in 1955 he gave the first performance of Gordon Jacob’s trombone concerto, and at the LSO he moved the section to larger-bore American trombones, a change English Wikipedia says other British orchestral players soon followed. He also taught at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama from 1967 and at the Royal Academy of Music from 2000, and wrote the textbook Trombone Technique.

The business, the company says, started in 1968, when Wick began making mutes and mouthpieces for himself and his LSO colleagues. Its earlier website explained the problem: it was hard to find mutes that played in tune, and mouthpieces that coped with the “notoriously difficult acoustics” of London’s Royal Festival Hall. The company says the first 100 mouthpieces were made that year, and that its very first design was a trombone mouthpiece.

The limited company behind the brand is younger, and has a musical past. Companies House records show that Denis Wick Products Limited was incorporated in February 1978 as The London Wind Orchestra Limited and took its present name in 1994. The London Wind Orchestra was Wick’s own ensemble, which, his website said in 2006, made prize-winning recordings in the 1970s.

Mutes, mouthpieces and a factory in Dorset.

The catalogue covers the whole brass family. Denis Wick makes mutes and mouthpieces for trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn, French horn, tenor horn, trombone, baritone, euphonium and tuba, with ranges such as the Heritage trumpet mouthpiece, the Ultra trombone mouthpiece and mouthpieces developed with the euphonium player Steven Mead. Its mutes include straight, cup and practice models in aluminium, as well as wooden mutes; the company says the birch for those comes from certified sustainable forests in Finland. It sells through distributors and dealers abroad, and runs an artist and ambassador programme, an app and a tips blog for players and teachers.

Two stories recur in the company’s telling. One is that Wick played prototype trombone mutes to Benjamin Britten, and that the one the composer chose is still made today. The other is that its mutes and mouthpieces helped define “the sound of British brass playing.” Both are the company’s own claims. In 2018 it marked its 50th anniversary with limited-edition straight mutes in a gold glitter finish, made of aluminium that was polished, hardened, painted and lacquered.

Production is not in London. The company says its products are “handcrafted in Dorset, England,” at a factory in Hamworthy, Poole, where it describes “hand-spun aluminum mutes” and “precision CNC-machined mouthpieces”; Companies House lists its registered office in Poole. It says aluminium scrap from mute-making and swarf from mouthpiece machining go back to foundries to be recycled, and that solar panels on the factory roof return surplus power to the National Grid. It also says it won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade in 2013, and its website has quoted a 2016 report in The Times that counted it among the “world-famous names” of British brass.

Brass and woodwind accessories.

A brass or woodwind player’s sound depends on small parts as much as on the instrument. The seven makers here each specialise in one or two of them, and several have changed hands.

Two make mutes. Denis Wick was founded in 1968 by the London Symphony Orchestra trombonist Denis Wick and makes mutes and mouthpieces in Poole, Dorset (“handcrafted in Dorset,” it says); since August 2025 it has been controlled by Music Center of Trento, Italy, Companies House records show. Humes & Berg’s website said in 2012 that Willie Berg founded it in Chicago in 1935 to make Stonelined mutes, and that its factory had been in East Chicago, Indiana, since 1948.

Two make mouthpieces. Otto Link began with Otto Link’s shop in New York in the 1920s; its mouthpieces are made in Elkhart, Indiana, by J.J. Babbitt, which says it acquired the brand in 1977. JodyJazz, founded by the saxophonist Jody Espina in New York in 2000, the company says, makes its mouthpieces in Savannah, Georgia, and owns Chedeville and Rousseau.

Three make reeds and ligatures. Marca was founded in 1957 by Franco Guccini in the Var, in Provence, is run by his grandson and says its reeds are made in France. Rovner, founded by Phil Rovner in 1974, makes its ligatures in Timonium, Maryland (“handmade in the USA,” it says) and has belonged since 2024 to Music Center, which also owns Légère. BG France, a family firm that Franck Bichon founded in 1985 from an idea of his father, the saxophone teacher Serge Bichon, says its ligatures and straps are made in its workshop at Chaponost, near Lyon.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Your art is our craft.

Wick stayed close to the trombone world after leaving the LSO. The International Trombone Association gave him its ITA Award in 1989 and its Neill Humfeld Award for teaching in 2006, and he was its president from 2004 to 2006, according to English Wikipedia; NAMM recorded an oral-history interview with him at the Royal Academy of Music in June 2006. His son, the tubist Stephen Wick, worked with him on designs, the company says. Denis Wick died on 12 February 2025, aged 93, as the French brass news site Trompette Actus reported the next day.

Ownership changed the same year. Companies House records show that on 5 August 2025 the Wick family’s registered control ended and Music Center S.r.l., of Trento in northern Italy, became the controlling shareholder, with more than 75 per cent of the shares and votes; new directors were appointed the same day. Music Center says it was founded in 1974 and is best known for woodwind pads made under the Pisoni name, and it is also a distributor: its online shop lists Denis Wick as a brand for which it is the exclusive distributor. We found no public announcement of the deal or its terms in the sources we checked. The Denis Wick website still gives Poole as the company’s home and keeps its motto, “Your Art is Our Craft.”

For a design guide, Denis Wick shows how a player’s name can become a toolmaker’s mark, built on the authority of an orchestral career rather than on graphics. Compare Vincent Bach, another brass brand founded by a performing player, and Humes & Berg, the American mute maker. For this guide we use a deep navy, aluminium grey and brass gold with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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