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Greetings,

I recently acquired a unique Rudy Muck Tuba mouthpiece. Its model number is "54c". It weighs a TON and reminds me of the old Deck mouthpieces but with a very shallow cup.

Those of you who may not be familiar with Rudy Muck, he was a trumpet player from the 1930's who developed "Cushion Rim" and double cup mouthpieces primarily for Trumpet and Trombone. He also constructed various trumpets and trombones. Fred Cirksena has done great work compiling great information about Rudy Muck, his mouthpieces and instruments. Please visit: www.rudymuck.info

I've done some searching through the Tubenet archives and have come up with few postings. Fred has never heard or seen of a tuba piece before. Does anyone else out there have or know of any other Rudy Muck Tuba mouthpieces? Does anyone happen to know who might have had custom mouthpieces made by Rudy?

John Griffiths graciously left me this particular mouthpiece. I used it from the time I was 12-18 years old . Because of the shallow cup I was able to start looking at higher tessitura pieces (like VW Concerto) on my big Yamaha 201 Bflat. I used it until I left for college and have always wondered about it's history and origin.

The pictures below compare it to a good ol' Bach 18.

Enjoy!

Tom

tmmcas1 wrote: Those of you who may not be familiar with Rudy Muck, he was a trumpet player from the 1930's who developed "Cushion Rim" and double cup mouthpieces primarily for Trumpet and Trombone. He also constructed various trumpets and trombones. Fred Cirksena has done great work compiling great information about Rudy Muck, his mouthpieces and instruments. Please visit: www.rudymuck.info

I'm interested in Rudy Muck stuff, too, and would be interested in hearing about his tuba mouthpieces.

My Jr. Hi. band teacher was a Rudy Muck man and had a handful of them he used with his Olds Recording trumpet. They were the only thing that he used and, sometimes, he sounded pretty good. He always talked about the RM trumpets and their 'big bored backpressure'. I didn't/still don't know exactly what that means but it sure made RM trumpets seem special.

The Big Ben wrote:I'm interested in Rudy Muck stuff, too, and would be interested in hearing about his tuba mouthpieces.

My Jr. Hi. band teacher was a Rudy Muck man and had a handful of them he used with his Olds Recording trumpet.

My dad is/was a Rudy Muck/Olds Recording guy, too. That combination was very special to him. Didn't know he made tuba mouthipieces, either. Cool.

I found a Rudy Muck tuba mouthpiece in the band room in Prairie du Chien Wisconsin in 1986, or so. If I remember correctly, it had an outer contour that was semi-spherical. The inside was kind of shallow and the rim was rounded. Weight +/- 1 lb. It had a ton of punch! Too much for my Cerveny Piggy to handle. It probably was effective in things like Conn 12J's and sousaphones. Wonder what became of it.... it's probably still in that school, serving as a doorstop!

Rudy Muck worked for Bach. When he developed his mouthpieces, he left Bach to pursue his own business selling them. Evidently, this was with Bach's blessing, as Rudy Muck also made and sold trumpets, which were usually assembled from "back door" Bach parts, and usually medium bore (.453), as the smaller bores, like the King .448 "S1" bore, the Conn .438 bore and others were the common bore for jazz band trumpeters then, unlike the ML .459 and larger that is more common today.

An older fellow in Shrine band with me won a Rudy Muck trumpet as a prize at a music contest when he was in high school and asked me to research it for him. I don't remember the model name right off, but it was for all practical intents and purposes a New York Bach medium bore -- great to soar on, not good for outdoor gigs.

Very cool! Let me know if you decide to part with it. Can you post a pic of the inside of the mouthpiece next to the helleberg? Is it super shallow?

Tom

It doesn't surprise me that the various incarnations of this 54C are different. I have two Rudy Muck 19C cushion rim trumpet mouthpieces and they are marked slightly differently altho' the wear on them and the style of the type is similar and suggests that they are from a similar time period. I love the cushion rim on trumpet and plan to have someone bore out the cup of one of them until it is more the ID that I use. There will still be plenty of cushion left on the rim.

I was playing on a Benge 24AW, a virtual clone of the Bach, with a thick rim, but I've moved to a slightly larger TU-9, with a thinner rim and that seems to work well...so go figure. Of course, there is a lot more embouchure movement (pivot) on the tuba, so it might make sense that a thinner rim would work better than on trumpet, where mpc pressure is an issue for me and the extra cushion is much appreciated.
royjohn