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Greetings,

In two weeks I'll be playing my sousaphone with our church carolers, walking around in the cold. Thinking a plastic mouthpiece might be a good idea, I looked at the Kelly web page. There I found their 3 for $33 special, available in any color you want as long it's white (apologies to Henry Ford). For $11 per mouthpiece I'm willing to experiment.

Right now I use a Conn #2, and have "in a box, somewhere..." my old Bach 24W. The Kelly tuba selection includes 18, 24AW, 25, and "Kellyberg". Which 3 of these would best complement my current mouthpieces? Do any of them replicate what I have?

Thanks for any help,

Perry

If you want to buy 3 samples, then I would take your fairly large instrument and your potential further embouchure development into consideration and buy the 3 largest tuba variants of the regular Kellyberg muthpieces (according to rumour there has been a special run of a copy of the rather large PT-50). That would be:

24AW
18
Kellyberg

Klaus

If you are looking to add to your range of mouthpiece sizes, then go with the Kelly 25, Kelly 18 and Kellyberg. If you want to avoid replication, then avoid the Kelly 24aw. It is almost the exact same inside diameter as the Bach 24aw. The Kelly 24aw does have a smaller throat bore so it will be easier to play. The Kelly 25 is a really small mouthpiece (30.78mm inside diameter). My final suggestion: do what Klaus said. 24AW, 18, Kellyberg.

From a combination of my playing and hearing others, the 18 sounds better on a Conn with its larger bore, the K-berg sounds better on the King with its smaller bore. I've not played nor heard any of the others.

I use a Kelly 18 outdoors on the 38K when it's cold.

That's exactly what I did. I played the 18 with a pep band today on a Jupiter Sousa (P.O.S.). The mouthpiece did me well, though. I'll use the 24AW at TubaChristmases this year and play around with the KellyBerg. The lack of mass around the throat tends to make it a little "vibrate-y".

Wrap golfers' lead tape around the throat, just beneath the cup, and the vibrations should be eliminated.

Thanks again for all of your recommendations. I think I will go with the 18, 24AW, and Kellyberg as many of you suggested.

Perhaps it's only academic at this point, but I'm curious: several of you either freely interchanged a 24W with a 24AW, or simply misread it. I ask for this reason - way back when (1976, probably) my band director recommended to me that it was time for me to buy my own mouthpiece instead of using a school mouthpiece like I had for the preceding 4 years. He handed me a Vincent Bach catalog, from which I picked the 24AW, noted for its '...sonorous, dark tone quality of enormous volume...'. I paid my $20 and waited for delivery. What arrived was a 24W, not a 24AW, with the explanation that the 24W was better suited to me. Figuring/hoping the Bach guy knew what he was talking about, I played the 24W and stayed with it for the next 9 years. The only difference between the two in the Bach catalog online is medium cup depth for the 24W, and deep cup for the 24AW. Are they really more similar than different?

TubaBobH wrote:Wrap golfers' lead tape around the throat, just beneath the cup, and the vibrations should be eliminated.

Aww, he beat me to it. It really does work.

...The only difference between the two in the Bach catalog online is medium cup depth for the 24W, and deep cup for the 24AW. Are they really more similar than different?

Yes, they are similar in as much as the rim shape and inner cup diameter are identical for both the 24AW and 24W. However, the fact that the 24AW has a deep cup and the 24W a medium depth cup makes them quite disimilar in sound output. The 24AW, with its deeper cup, produces a darker, deeper fuller sound than does the 24W.

I honestly do not know what type information you would have/could have provided someone processing Bach mouthpiece orders that would have led them to believe you needed a 24W instead of an 24AW. A 24AW may require a little more breath support and embochure control than an 24W, but certainly nothing a 4th year tuba student could not handle, and certainly not something that could be diagnosed by an order processor at Bach.

Not to sound overly cynical, but it seems to me that since the 24AW is, most likely, a lot more popular than the 24W, they may have been out of AWs and wanted to ship out an over-supply of Ws. I am certainly not implying that any irreparable harm was done, I am just puzzled as to why/how someone at Bach would recommend one mouthpiece over another without hearing you play (strengths and weaknesses), knowing what type of tuba you played, your mouth size, etc...