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I'm trying to figure out if the corks on my Humes and Berg mute need shaved a bit in order to fit in my Willson Eb tuba better.

As things stand, the corks are 1/2" thick. The mute is 30" long. 17" are inside the tuba and 13" stick out. It sounds OK (for a mute- )and the pitch is OK. This is the only tuba I use this mute with.

The reason I'm asking, is that the mute seems to stick out a lot farther than what I'm used to seeing, and it seems a little wobbly in there.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Jack Denniston

If the pitch and sound are OK, I'd guess the corks are the right thickness. Don't worry too much about how far it sticks out of the bell -- that'll make it easier to insert & extract quickly when that's needed.

Exactly. Shaving off too much cork will cause the mute to sound like a muffler, not a mute, as we're more after a change of tone colour than just volume reduction as is the left pedal of an upright piano, and by constricting the airflow, the pitch will go flat. It's much harder to make a tuba mute rather than a trumpet mute, because there is so much more variance between different maker's throat tapers. I would leave it as it is.

The corks will compress over time, and at a point several years from now you will be posting a thread asking how to add cork to give back more ring to the tone and fix the flat pitch!

I had the exact opposite problem. I bought a mute back in college that fit the horn I had at the time really well. When I bought a HB2, and sold the other, I had to ADD cork to the mute for it to work. All it did was muffle. Luckily I had a t-bone friend with spare cork just sitting around...

Just experiment until you find the right amount of cork. If you shave off too much, just go get some and put it back on.

I've found that a model railroad shop is a workable source for cork in long strips. Get some HO gauge cork roadbed. Not expensive, quite workable.