How do I learn about mouthpieces?

[Doc]

Ideally, I would go visit a player who has a 30 different ones to try and compare, but that's not going to happen any time soon.

Most good teachers have many various quality mouthpieces for students to try. Some aficionados have a good supply. In these COVID times, it may be hard to find someone willing to share.

I guess some teachers and aficionados have forgotten that they haven't quit making soap and water. Or bleach.

[Doc]

Every one of my tubas features a different mouthpiece.

Same.

[Stryk]

Ideally, I would go visit a player who has a 30 different ones to try and compare, but that's not going to happen any time soon.

Most good teachers have many various quality mouthpieces for students to try. Some aficionados have a good supply. In these COVID times, it may be hard to find someone willing to share.

I guess some teachers and aficionados have forgotten that they haven't quit making soap and water. Or bleach.

Touche

[matt g]

Ideally, I would go visit a player who has a 30 different ones to try and compare, but that's not going to happen any time soon.

Most good teachers have many various quality mouthpieces for students to try. Some aficionados have a good supply. In these COVID times, it may be hard to find someone willing to share.

I guess some teachers and aficionados have forgotten that they haven't quit making soap and water. Or bleach.

Yeah, and this stuff has been around since I was a kid:

https://www.rochethomas.com/product/143/mi-t-mist-32oz

[Doc]

Yeah, and this stuff has been around since I was a kid:

https://www.rochethomas.com/product/143/mi-t-mist-32oz

YEP!

[Three Valves]

I'm happy with my germaphobia, you guys trying to prove something??

[Doc]

I'm happy with my germaphobia, you guys trying to prove something??

Not at all.

[bloke]

Bleach contacting silver morphs silver to silver chloride (AgCl).

Soap and water is fine.

That having been said, if one or the other of us does not survive the other's cooties, the "common good" result is just a little bit less traffic congestion, yes?

major announcement:
I may have come up with a "Helleberg"-style mouthpiece that I actually personally find that I could use...if (??) it can be legitimately grouped into the sea of mouthpieces classified as such...
(' had not previously been a fan of any of them.)

Screwing around with my crappy lathe, I came up with something (yeah..."Helleberg"-ish) that works (REALLY well) with my not-quite completed super-compact Holton B-flat tuba project ( viewtopic.php?f=19&t=911&start=160 ). ' funny how its measurements are so close to another (production) Helleberg shape which (clearly...at least to me) offers mediocre results. Finally, it's not a B.A.H. (big-@$$ Helleberg). It's more of a C.D.H. (conservatively-dimensioned Helleberg).
I have not yet tried it on "normal" tubas...you know, double-oversized tubas: YCB-826S tubas and such...

[BopEuph]

I don't know about any of you guys, but if a mouthpiece wasn't offered in a local store (which really usually only caters to student players), I had to order or buy from here. Locally, most tuba players never have seemed interested in letting me try out their gear, even before Covid. A case of beer didn't even seem to sweeten the deal...

The only cool thing is I live close enough to Terry Warburton to shop there. But he doesn't have a huge selection of tuba mouthpieces to try out.

[jtm]

major announcement:
I may have come up with a "Helleberg"-style mouthpiece that I actually personally find that I could use...if (??) it can be legitimately grouped into the sea of mouthpieces classified as such...
(' had not previously been a fan of any of them.)

Ha. One of the three mouthpieces I have now is a conservatively dimensioned Helleberg. It says nothing on it except "Helleberg," so I've no idea where it fits in the constellation of Helleberg-style things. But I'm actually liking it for the past few days, after not liking it much 6 months ago.

Maybe that means that I should wait until my embouchure it better developed before even worrying about comparing mouthpieces. Of course, I might really like your new Helleberg, too.

[BopEuph]

The only cool thing is I live close enough to Terry Warburton to shop there. But he doesn't have a huge selection of tuba mouthpieces to try out.

You could ask if Terry has any blanks he hasn’t finished cutting.

An aside...

Around 1994 I visited Terry’s shop and he had a Fairly large Helleberg cup that he had made several copies of for Ed Firth, iirc (the mouthpiece had “E.F.” stamped on the side). I had a Rudy 3/4 BBb with me and wanted to get a mouthpiece to pair with it and he suggested having that one finished. So he cut a rim into it, and we went through a few iterations along with drilling out the throat a little (again, iirc) until that mouthpiece lit that little Rudy up. It sounded huge. Then he plated it and I was a happy camper. It worked well with that Rudy and Yamaha sousaphones and nothing else. Years later I was teaching lessons and a kid bought a 20J and his old mouthpiece wasn’t cutting it. We tried a few out and I found that big old E.F. piece and he sounded awesome. I think I charged him $25 for it.

Terry has made some great mouthpiece designs in the past. The Rose model he made for the Tuba Exchange for a while was nice. The Arnold Jacobs copy (later called “The Grail”?) was good. I don’t remember what exactly it was, but his standard rims never felt right for me.

What I was able to do was to get him to put a very “Bach-like” rim on the blank at a slightly larger diameter than a Bach 7, around 34mm.

But this was 27 years ago...

[BopEuph]

I never thought about that. I've heard he's done that, but when I went with my trombone around '05, he just pieced together the parts that seemed to work best for me, and when I brought the bass herald trumpet, he just found a piece that seemed to work (it's a euro shank, and the euph mouthpieces did NOT work well with it).

That might be a good idea, but I am so not picky with gear, I think it definitely took the 10 years with the PT-48 to know what I do and don't like about it. I just always assume the issue is needing to practice more, and that's usually worked for me. I did just grab up an RT-88+, and am looking forward to getting it.

[bloke]

Opinions on instruments and mouthpieces vary so widely (regardless of whether they come out of the mouths of duffers or virtuosos) that I just don’t put any stock in any opinions of any equipment in particular, and strive very hard to only form opinions after testing things out for myself.
My eyebrows do tend to rise when nearly everyone describes one particular characteristic of a piece of equipment as “very _____”, as all characteristics must be balanced with-and-against each other.