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I was thinking of plating my 1 year old Tuba mouthpiece, but some of my friends told me it is better to plate a brand new mouthpiece from start as gold plating of an old mouthpiece may wear off easily.

Hope you guys could give me some suggestions?

Thank you

The age of the silverplating is not related to the success of goldplating, but it needs to have a good perfect surface and most pieces that have been used will need to be buffed and maybe re-silverplated if they have the inevitable dings or scratches. Sometimes it's possible to clean up a used mouthpiece enough without replating, but it depends on a lot of things including how well the original silverplating was done. You don't want to pay the cost of goldplating and have problems because the silver is bubbling on the base metal. About wear - gold is really expensive now, and some platers save money by not using very much gold, so it wears off quickly. A good job with enough gold may cost as much or more than the mouthpiece was originally.

What mouthpiece is it?

It's a Conn Hellerberg 120s

It should last almost forever with good care.

I had my brand new 24AW engraved and gold plated at a manufacturing jewellers in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter. I asked for 10 micrograms at the time and it proved quite expensive but has only just started to wear through to the silver - that was 19 years ago and the mp has been used pretty much daily since for home practice and has lasted 2000+ rehearals and at least 400 concerts, recordings and contests.
I believe the average plating is around 2-4 micrograms. For me this would have lasted 4 - 8 years I guess. It will wear through eventually depending on your use profile.
Hope this helps

I'm not sure what unit of measure you mean, but micrograms are not a measure of plating thickness. If you mean microns, 10 is an awful lot of gold - it would be prohibitively expensive now.

In that case, are there any site which sells mouthpieces with good gold plating service? My friends and I are considering a gold rim plated perantucci. However I heard perantucci only plates the whole mouthpiece gold. Any suggestions?

Novicekiddo wrote:In that case, are there any site which sells mouthpieces with good gold plating service? My friends and I are considering a gold rim plated perantucci. However I heard perantucci only plates the whole mouthpiece gold. Any suggestions?

Mouthpieceexpress.com does some good work. However, they don't seem to carry perantucci mouthpieces....

At Mouthpiece express you can get a brand new gold plated Conn 120S for about $105 plus shipping. It my be the better way to go if you are set on the 120S.

Novicekiddo wrote:In that case, are there any site which sells mouthpieces with good gold plating service? My friends and I are considering a gold rim plated perantucci. However I heard perantucci only plates the whole mouthpiece gold. Any suggestions?

I use a PT-50 with a gold-plated rim and cup. I took it (when it was normal silver plate) to a local jewelry store and asked them to gold-plate the rim and cup, came out fine. Been using it for about two years now, every day, no plating loss yet. Cost me about $40.

opus37 wrote:At Mouthpiece express you can get a brand new gold plated Conn 120S for about $105 plus shipping. It my be the better way to go if you are set on the 120S.

A decent thickness of 24k gold by a reputable plater would cost about as much as this.

Doug Elliott wrote:I'm not sure what unit of measure you mean, but micrograms are not a measure of plating thickness. If you mean microns, 10 is an awful lot of gold - it would be prohibitively expensive now.

Well, I always thought that's what they'd said - guess I heard wrong (probably a sizzle symbal too close to my ear the evening before).

It cost me £100 for the engraving and plating - I'd just paid £70 for the mp so I guess it was expensive in those days too. However, as it was done at a manufacturing jewellers shop, i.e. not retail, I guessed it was pretty good value at the time.

I went to a Brass shop today and tried out the Perantucci 84 and 48 on a Meinl weston 196 . I am considering ordering along with one or two friends a pt 84 from wwbw and plate it at goldchops? But does goldchops ship internationally? Or are there any better services out there ? There isn't any place i can plate a mouthpiece locally for me.

Novicekiddo wrote:I went to a Brass shop today and tried out the Perantucci 84 and 48 on a Meinl weston 196 . I am considering ordering along with one or two friends a pt 84 from wwbw and plate it at goldchops? But does goldchops ship internationally? Or are there any better services out there ? There isn't any place i can plate a mouthpiece locally for me.

Didn't you receive a service from the brass shop, where they had the mouthpiece in stock so you could use their time, money, and expertise to be able to try several mouthpieces, and they didn't charge you anything for that service even though it was using their time, money, and expertise to actually have those mouthpieces in stock so that you could walk in and try them?

Do you really feel like you don't owe them anything for that service? Shouldn't you buy the mouthpiece there? Or maybe you could even order it in goldplate? Shouldn't they be making the profit on the sale of that mouthpiece instead of you spending it on shipping costs?

Doug Elliott wrote:

Novicekiddo wrote:I went to a Brass shop today and tried out the Perantucci 84 and 48 on a Meinl weston 196 . I am considering ordering along with one or two friends a pt 84 from wwbw and plate it at goldchops? But does goldchops ship internationally? Or are there any better services out there ? There isn't any place i can plate a mouthpiece locally for me.

Didn't you receive a service from the brass shop, where they had the mouthpiece in stock so you could use their time, money, and expertise to be able to try several mouthpieces, and they didn't charge you anything for that service even though it was using their time, money, and expertise to actually have those mouthpieces in stock so that you could walk in and try them?

Do you really feel like you don't owe them anything for that service? Shouldn't you buy the mouthpiece there? Or maybe you could even order it in goldplate? Shouldn't they be making the profit on the sale of that mouthpiece instead of you spending it on shipping costs?

+1.

BTW, if you DO decide to order from WWBW or goldchops, don't forget to budget for international shipping costs, import duty, VAT, and currency exchange fees--all of which are already included in your local brass shop's price. (And, no, neither one of them will declare a lower value for the mouthpiece on the customs declaration form or label it as a gift, so don't waste their time by asking.)

Yes, the staff at that shop are really nice. They are always doing repairs for free. There was a time they spent about an hour fixing a trumpet at no cost for a friend of mine. I went there because I thought they provided gold plating service. However, They don't and I was unable to get a gold plated rim mouthpiece from them.

But I was thinking of getting the mouthpieces from them instead of wwbw and shipping the mouthpieces to goldchops? I will check the shipping costs first, but i am unsure if goldchops ship internatinally.