Blessing Tuba Mouthpieces

[iiipopes]

Well, well, well! After I purchased my Boosey & Hawkes 921 cornet some months ago, it prompted me to a mouthpiece safari. In researching other items, I ran across articles about the Lausmann company in Germany, which makes mouthpieces on contract for other companies. This includes Wick, Faxx, GEWA, some B&S, and Blessing, among others.

For years, I had said the Blessing version of the 18 is the best tuba mouthpiece Bach never made. Well, I must now modify that to say since the sale of the Bach company to Selmer. The urban legend is that Bach gave a case of specimen mouthpieces to someone when the company was moved from Mt. Vernon to Elkhart. Somewhere along the line, that case of specimen mouthpieces made its way to Lausmann, whether on a subcontract basis while Selmer got up to speed, or surreptitiously, or whatever. Lausmann scanned them. So when you purchase a Blessing tuba mouthpiece, you are essentially purchasing a Mt. Vernon 18 or 24AW, which do have some manufacturing differences to current Selmer production, including the sloping rim of the 18, which is different to current production.

I have a GEWA 1 1/2 C that came with the cornet in addition to the "standard" Wick 4B. Yes, it feels and plays like a Mt. Vernon 1 1/2 C, not a current production 1 1/2 C. Why care? If you really want to see what the close-to-mythical Mt. Vernon mouthpieces were all about, you can purchase a GEWA 3C trumpet mouthpiece for @$50 including shipping instead of @$3-500 for a "real" Mt. Vernon 3C mouthpiece, or similar price differential for the tuba mouthpieces.

So, I modify my comments from years earlier: a Blessing 18, as made by Lausmann, is the best 18 Bach never made after the sale of the company to Selmer.

[bloke]

I don't know about that narrative/legend...but the tone of it reminds me of others I've heard - about all sorts of things - which are dubious.

Prior to the type of scanning that is done today, mechanical tracing was plenty accurate.

It's easy to pick out a "really good example of a blah-blah" and scan it.

[bloke]

Blessing offered some very well-made tuba mouthpieces (whether-or-not any individual was interested in those sizes) prior to being shuttered (as it's now only a brand name).

Their trumpet mouthpieces - though (Bach-style and Bach numbers) - all seemed to be just about the same on the inside (??)

[arpthark]

I had a newer Bach 18 and an older Blessing 18 here at the same time.

They were definitely different. Although I didn't really care for either in my particular tuba, I liked the Blessing more. They're both now at a high school in North Carolina or thereabouts.

[iiipopes]

I don't know about that narrative/legend...but the tone of it reminds me of others I've heard - about all sorts of things - which are dubious.

Prior to the type of scanning that is done today, mechanical tracing was plenty accurate.

It's easy to pick out a "really good example of a blah-blah" and scan it.

Indeed. Hence my reference as "urban legend." But it is interesting that the entire line of GEWA mouthpieces, which include selected popular models of essentially every brass instrument, all have the same Bach fluting between the cup and shank without modification.

And again, when the family still operated the company, I have a Blessing 13 trumpet mouthpiece and I gave my uncle's Blessing 13 cornet mouthpiece to my son, which were very popular mouthpieces back in the day, very similar to a Bach 10 1/2 D.

[the elephant]

I have been sending students to buy the Blessing 18 since about 1995 when I discovered they were a lot more consistent (and very good) than what Bach was selling at that time. I still have a Bach 18, a Mt. Vernon 18, and my trusty Blessing 18. The Blessing is better (for me) than either of the genuine articles.

[bloke]

I used to buy gobs and gobs of those things and sold them at my brick and mortar store until the better part of a couple of decades ago, when it became too dangerous and too expensive tax-wise to run a brick-and-mortar store and own a fairly nice house in Memphis. Now that St Louis Music Supply owns the Blessing name, does it seem as though the Blessing mouthpieces are still made by the same people as before, and is the quality still holding up? Is anyone buying new ones?

The Blessing/Johnson family originally built valve sets for other Elkhart manufacturers, and always seemed to be pretty conscientious about quality of components. As an example, they purchased rotor assemblies for their trombones from Joe Marcinkiewicz out west, and it seemed to me that the tolerances on those rotor assemblies exceeded those of Vincent Bach.

[iiipopes]

I used to buy gobs and gobs of those things and sold them at my brick and mortar store until the better part of a couple of decades ago, when it became too dangerous and too expensive tax-wise to run a brick-and-mortar store and own a fairly nice house in Memphis. Now that St Louis Music Supply owns the Blessing name, does it seem as though the Blessing mouthpieces are still made by the same people as before, and is the quality still holding up? Is anyone buying new ones?

The Blessing/Johnson family originally built valve sets for other Elkhart manufacturers, and always seemed to be pretty conscientious about quality of components. As an example, they purchased rotor assemblies for their trombones from Joe Marcinkiewicz out west, and it seemed to me that the tolerances on those rotor assemblies exceeded those of Vincent Bach.

I have a new Blessing 7C cornet mouthpiece on the way to try out for my Eb soprano cornet. It will be here in about a week, but I will be gone for about a week after that, so please give me a couple weeks after that to really put it through its paces and I will report back.

[cktuba]

I've got a former student who was playing a mouthpiece of similar size and we got him one of these. He still plays it to this day and still sounds great on it. If they ever size it up to 32.7 to 33mm version, I would at least like to add it to the collection.

[bloke]

I've got a former student who was playing a mouthpiece of similar size and we got him one of these. He still plays it to this day and still sounds great on it. If they ever size it up to 32.7 to 33mm version, I would at least like to add it to the collection.

7

[catgrowlB]

Anyone have any experience with the Blessing helleburg mouthpieces? Just curious. I see them listed on mouthpiecexpress.