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Is there any reason why the rim of a mouthpiece has to be a circle? Would it work to have a mouthpiece with more of an oval shape? Just curious if it has ever been tried and if not why.

Ben

bigboom wrote:Is there any reason why the rim of a mouthpiece has to be a circle? Would it work to have a mouthpiece with more of an oval shape? Just curious if it has ever been tried and if not why.

It's been tried and never caught on. It's more difficult to make a mouthpiece that isn't symnetrical about its axis mostly because they're machined by spinning a blank in a lathe. I suppose you could take your favorite mouthpiece and put it into a hydraulic bress and bend the cup into an oval with very little effort.

bigboom wrote:Is there any reason why the rim of a mouthpiece has to be a circle? Would it work to have a mouthpiece with more of an oval shape? Just curious if it has ever been tried and if not why.
Ben

From Art Hovey's Tuba Logic web site...
"My Special Mouthpiece is pictured at right. Because of the way my teeth grew, I was unable to prevent air from escaping from the sides of my mouthpiece without using a lot of pressure. I began experimenting with "wrap-around rims" many years ago, and found that they enable me to play with much less pressure, making high notes possible.

At one time I used even more curvature than this, but it interfered with the low register.

Doug Elliot made this one for me. He gave me some extra plastic to work with on the rim, and I sculpted it myself into the shape that I wanted. Doug also made an extra-long shank for me (not pictured here) which was very helpful with one of my tubas. " - Art Hovey, Galvanized Jazz Band

http://www.geocities.com/galvanized.geo ... index.html

http://www.asymmetric-mouthpiece.freese ... _lynch.htm
some trupets swear by them.

Tabor (who's on here), one of my fellow college players, got a hold of a trumpet mouthpiece that was shaped almost like one of those "As Seen on TV" symbols that you'd see on products. The exterior was even the same shape, which was a sort of heavily-rounded rectangle.

After seeing one of my earlier "wrap-around" mouthpieces, (see Paul S, above) Ray Noguero went home and put an old brass mouthpiece onto a grindstone to shape its rim in similar fashion. He told me that he didn't like the result. But then he stuck it into a shop vise and squeezed it down to a elliptical shape, and it worked much better for him.
If you have the patience and a moderate amount of skill with tools and materials there is no end to the fun you can have with mouthpiece shapes. The only really important things are to make the rim comfortable, make the cup volume about the same as a good conventional mouthpiece, and to make the venturi (throat constriction) very smooth and streamlined.