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Has anyone come across or experimented with non-radially-symmetric mouthpieces for tuba? Years ago I had an asymmetric trumpet mouthpiece with a cup shaped like a gibbous moon. It didn't work all that well, but it was an interesting piece of machining.

Playing low notes on tuba requires a large cup diameter, but the smaller cup diameters produce a more velvety tone at least in my case. I modied a mouthpiece for playing low notes, and as the cup diameter increased, the tone became more monotonous and flatulent. At 33mm I still wasn't happy with the low register, but it was getting too big to fit my face. I use a lead hammer to pound the rim oval, 30.5 x 36mm inside. With the long dimension sideways, I could for the first time play a pedal Bb without an embouchure shift. Better still, the tone returned to what it was when the mouthpiece was 30.5mm cup diameter. This was never a great sounding mouthpiece (which is why I butchered it), but its old tone came back. It seems to me that it could also benefit from having the outside edges curved toward the mouth a bit to help with the seal, like the Art Hovey and Cleave mouthpieces.

Has anyone else experimented with this? There's really no reason a tuba mouthpiece should be round except for ease of manufacture. The asymmetric trumpet mouthpiece didn't seem to work very well, but a trumpet mouthpiece is very small compared to the size of the mouth. A tuba mouthpiece is large compared the mouth, so maybe it should be shaped a little more like a mouth.

-Eric

The Wedge mouthpiece is different from the experiment described above because the oval is oriented top to bottom, not side to side. The sides of the rim are shaped to decrease surface contact, not increase it. Although these features are opposite to what has been tried before the design actually works as well for tuba and trombone as it does for trumpet. We have only done a few tuba mouthpieces, but the ones we have made were well received.

Cheers,
Dave Harrison
Inventor and manufacturer of Wedge mouthpieces

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Dave Harrison

^ Very interesting. You have any tuba players get their mouthpiece 'ovaled' yet? Have you tried this with other materials (stainless steel, Lexan, etc)?

tooba wrote:^ Very interesting. You have any tuba players get their mouthpiece 'ovaled' yet?

Um ...

DrDave wrote:We have only done a few tuba mouthpieces, but the ones we have made were well received.

Cheers,
Dave Harrison
Inventor and manufacturer of Wedge mouthpieces

If you want to experiment with modifying your own mouthpieces, I recommend that you get a beater cheapo mouthpiece off of eBay that is most like your current mouthpiece. You don't want to experiment on something expensive, but you also don't want to try playing something radically different in shape and depth to your current piece. I am going to track down a beater student mouthpiece myself and give this a shot just for fun.

schlepporello wrote:

BRSousa wrote:If you want to experiment with modifying your own mouthpieces, I recommend that you get a beater cheapo mouthpiece off of eBay that is most like your current mouthpiece. You don't want to experiment on something expensive,......

Kelly mouthpieces come to mind.

Here is how these look, when paid for with a crossed check:

Kellys also allow you to cut material easily. Brass would be more difficult to shape.

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Dave Harrison