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one of my trumpet friends brought up an interesting question today, are there tuba mouthpieces for a tuba?

dmeacham5 wrote:are there tuba mouthpieces for a tuba?

Yes, I've heard tell of those.

A French horn mouthpiece surreptitiously inserted into a tuba mouthpiece is absolutely wonderful for doing elephant calls.

The question that comes to mind is: Why?

On a practical level you can take a bass trombone mouthpiece and add some tape to the shank (no need to with the small British shank) and then plug it in to your horn. It should make it much easier for you to play in the high range.

But on a tuba what good is a mouthpiece that only makes the high range easier. And, more importantly, how important is it to play with a decent tone? If you plug in a mouthpiece that makes a significant difference to the range you can play in, you will likely end up getting the sh*tiest tuba tone ever.


I play in a community brass band. One of our tuba players is actually a trombonist and plays tuba for fun. Last year he played on a
Bach 24aw and sounded "ok" with it. (I've always though is tone on tuba sounded too forced). This year, he move to a bass trombone mouthpiece with tuning bits and hobby shop parts to make it work. How does it sound?... Nothing like a tuba Heck, I know at least 5 people that have said "wow, the bass trombonist was really playing loud today" only to turn around and realize that there was no bass trombonist present that day. Does he have a good range with that mouthpiece? Yes he does, but at the cost of not blending with the whole section and the whole band.

Trumpet players who use screamers do so mostly for Big band/commercial/in-your-face-ridiculously-high-and-loud music on lead parts that need to "cut through". If you feel you need to "cut through" an ensemble with a tuba, you're using the wrong instrument for the job.

A PT-34 can function as such. I used to use one when playing such pieces as the runs up to top line A in "The Thunderer," etc.

Pretty limited application, but I do occasionally need it for very a specific purpose. Here's what I've always used. It's a dial-a-cup mouthpiece that supposedly belonged to Jake years ago. "Kingross" is stamped on the side. Dialed all the way in, it does what it's supposed to. Pretty slick job of machinework, too.

UncleBeer wrote:

That's a cool concept.

bloke wrote:Yes, I believe there actually are some tuba mouthpieces for tuba.

As far as "screamer" (high range?) tuba mouthpieces are concerned, I actually own a couple of mouthpieces (admittedly not as fancy as Unc's) that can almost get me up to middle c.

Well, then. There ya go!