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Throughout a majority of my instruction as a tuba player, I was strongly encouraged to make sure when switching between bass and contrabass tuba that I had mouthpieces with exact matching rims (contour, rim and cup diameters, etc et al).

I know of at least a few professionals out there who are proponents of this school of thought, as well as different mouthpiece manufacturers that offer products with this concept intact (Laskey, Monette, and Josef Klier come to mind). However, I'm curious to see how common this approach is/isn't and would be interested to hear other schools of thought as well.

It does offer some comfort, but I find if I'm on an orchestra gig with two tubas, an F and a CC that I usually keep the same exact mouthpiece for both. That is unless the part for the F tuba goes and stays above the staff for some time. Then I would enjoy the benefits of the shallower solo mp strictly for endurance sake.. I have a Monette 94 Prana (Schmitz) set for CC and F, same with a set of G&W (Baer), and also a Sidey Classic Helleberg and the corresponding solo mp.

For me it seems like it takes more adjustment to the air column, (how deep I push the air) when going from large to small or vice versa. This seems more of an inconvenience than a rim difference (as long as they are not too drastically disparite.

But it does depend on other factors. Some are musical and others just about stamina and accuracy.

Curmudgeon wrote:Some may run out of upper lip before hitting their nose.

Though you wouldn't be able to draw this conclusion just from the measurements, as it also depends on mouthpiece placement technique. In this case, though, it seems like it would be easy enough to file out a big notch into which one's nose could comfortably fit.

I suppose that's a better solution in some ways.