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Mattias, I'm assuming that what you're looking at falls in the "vintage" class (i.e. over 20 years old). Yes, there was a brand of tuba, sold by Walter Sear (mostly rebranded Cerveny and de Prins). Search the TubeNet archives for "Walter Sear" for a wealth of information.

I have a Sear-Helleberg mouthpiece that was given to me by my teacher, which was made from solid nickle-silver.

windshieldbug wrote:I have a Sear-Helleberg mouthpiece that was given to me by my teacher, which was made from solid nickle-silver.

I too had one of these that came with a sousaphone I bought. I never used it so I sold it, but I wasn't aware that it was solid nickel-silver. Now that you mention it, it did have that dull nickel -silver look rather than the shiny silver look. Since nickel-silver is really just a brass alloy, are there any issues with playing on it vs. a silver or gold plated mouthpiece?

This is the only "Sear" brand mouthpiece of which I am aware. Walter Sear still runs Sear Sound studios in NYC, so it there's a specific mouthpiece you've seen you could write to him and ask him about it.

http://members.aol.com/searsound/

Lew wrote: Since nickel-silver is really just a brass alloy, are there any issues with playing on it vs. a silver or gold plated mouthpiece?

None that I experienced, and I used it for about 2 years. I believe the earliest brasswind mouthpieces were similarly constructed. I certainly have a large number of NS's from the 19th century.

The Sear-Helleburg I've got is a fairly normal helleburg with a slightly larger back bore. I was using it with a 186 to "open up" the feel of the horn.

It's a pretty nice piece - I can't comment on the solid nickel silver.