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I know Klaus can answer this, and hopefully some other mouthpiece characteristic experts. What characteristic(s) of a mouthpiece would have the high range flat compared to the rest of the range? That is, what could a person change if the tuning slide is all the way in, the rest of the range is just fine, but starting just above the staff the notes are coming out flat. (I'm hoping madly that "use more air" is not among the responses; attempting to raise the pitch jumps a partial rather than raising the pitch of the partial being played.)
TY

My source of knowledge is the Vincent Bach booklet that I bought 55 years ago. Some or all of it may be available online now.

According to Vincent Bach himself a narrow throat will cause a pitch compression. Low range goes sharp, high range goes flat. When I told this to an experienced bandmaster, he mentioned that some Lignatone piston cornets from Amati that briefly were popular during the late fifties due to a low proce point came with very narrow mouthpiece throats and that these cornets were very flat in the top range.

German mouthpieces often have small throats. Perantucci and Robert Tucci mouthpieces are made in Germany, but after American ideas.

I rarely touch the throat area from the cup side, when I modify mouthpieces. But I have opened up many backbores and shortened whatever length of cylindrical throat there was. Less slotting and higher demands on the exactness of my intonation, but then I feel I get much more control over finer pitch details. Keeping long notes stable in pitch also becomes harder, but I feel I get much more alive instruments from the mouthpiece modifications.

Klaus

Thanks, Klaus. I don't know where my PT 64 lies in the throat size area, but I suspect it is on the small size. I like it because it does not suck the air out of my lungs like a larger mouthpiece does.

Hi Mary-Ann - just for my curiosity: is it your Eb Nordic Star we are referring to as playing flat in the register above the staff?

I had the same problem with a at least 50 year old battered Besson Eb 3+1 compensated tuba, there the partial solution was 1) using a small cup mouthpiece and 2) shortening the instrument such that I had to bend down the lower register, but on the other hand did not need to bend the upper register as much up.

A similar approach might work for you?

MaryAnn wrote:Thanks, Klaus. I don't know where my PT 64 lies in the throat size area, but I suspect it is on the small size. I like it because it does not suck the air out of my lungs like a larger mouthpiece does.

This is a good resource for mouthpiece measurements:

http://www.dwerden.com/Mouthpieces/tuba.cfm" target="_blank

The PT-64, at 7.8 mm is a little bit on the small side to me.

FWIW, when I owned a small F tuba, I tried a PT-64. I liked the sound, but intonation was NOT very good at all. Switching to another F mouthpiece (Baer MMVI F) offered much better intonation.

Interesting trend in Conn mouthpieces: smaller the mouthpiece, larger the throat.

Conn 120S (32.5) 8.1
Conn 2 (31.6) 8.33
Conn 7B (31.5) 8.5
Conn 3 (30.5) 8.73

It's very simple. The larger the overall volume of the cup (or bowl), the smaller the octaves will become. The Helleberg 'Chief' had a very wide and deep cup, but the smaller throat helped to compensate. I've found that a larger (and sometimes longer) backbore helps to correct this problem as well. But it also seems to make the tone a tad brighter in the process. The smaller Helleberg is quite deep, but the relative narrowness helps to keep the overall volume down. A Geib style mouthpiece gives you more width, but compensates by having a bowl shape that's not terribly deep. I like that type of mouthpiece because I simply can't play narrow mouthpieces.

The old Schilke 66 and 67 mouthpieces were based on the Helleberg concept. However, they not only had just a little bigger throat, but also a bigger and longer backbore (long stem) too. This helped in keeping the octaves spaced correctly (in terms of pitch), but also made those pieces just a tad brighter sounding than the Helleberg 7B or 'Chief'. Because of their weird, flat rims, I could never play the 66, but the 67 worked very well for me. It lent a very big sound that stayed pretty well 'up to pitch' as you went higher. Schilke would flare out the ends of the shanks, so that the backbore was at its absolute maximum at the tip of the shank. If you dropped one, you would have a heck of a dent.

I'm not at all familiar with the world of PT pieces, so I have no idea how they compare, etc.

barry grrr-ero wrote:The old Schilke 66 and 67 mouthpieces were based on the Helleberg concept. However, they not only had just a little bigger throat, but also a bigger and longer backbore (long stem) too. This helped in keeping the octaves spaced correctly (in terms of pitch), but also made those pieces just a tad brighter sounding than the Helleberg 7B or 'Chief'. Because of their weird, flat rims, I could never play the 66, but the 67 worked very well for me. It lent a very big sound that stayed pretty well 'up to pitch' as you went higher. Schilke would flare out the ends of the shanks, so that the backbore was at its absolute maximum at the tip of the shank. If you dropped one, you would have a heck of a dent.

I measure my Schilke 66 throat at 8.33mm (but - the rim seems very ordinary to me, and can't see anything unusual about length, so maybe we're talking about two different things. My Schilkes are Bach tulips, not Conn lilies.) My Schilke 62 has the same throat, and makes a fair bass tuba mouthpiece.

So given that I need a bowl shaped piece (because funnel shapes cause me in particular to have a delayed sound, which ends up behind the beat, and I dont' think I can easily overcome that) and other than the flatness of the high register I'm quite happy with the PT64, would one advise
a) getting a spare PT64 so I can try having someone drill out the bore in tiny increments from the back side
b) trying the most similar mpc I can find that has a slightly larger bore? I don't have anything else very similar; the funnel ones don't work at all for me. I need a bowl.
c) something else? Are mouthpieces generally available for trial? It seems that any piece is going to get insertion marks on it on trial, which would make it "used" if it were returned.

I have a Melton 150 something or other that I got back when I had my F tuba, and I sound blatty with it (too small.) I haven't checked its high range intonation, and frankly I didn't notice it on the PT64 until I had a unison with the trombones on Tchaik 6 last night and could not get up to their pitch. I don't practice with a tuner (except for slide settings) because my ear is trained to blend with what is around me, and a considerable amount of my practice is with recordings of the pieces we will be doing, so that i can walk in and know where I am and when I'm supposed to play if I get lost counting 147 measures.

As I remember it your tuba is a 5 valve Eb tuba.

What do you consider high range?

Which key was the problematic passage with the trombones? Could you tell the rehearsal and/or bar numbers of the given passage as available in a specific score on IMSLP?

I have played and taught enough of trombone to know that many amateur trombonists go sharp on especially 5th position and beyond because they are too lazy to stretch their arms sufficiently.

The other side of the equation is that a tubist has options of adapting his/hers fingerings for passages in certain keys and in certain ranges. The general policy of pulling the 3rd valve to lover the main bugle a major third in combination with the 2nd valve will cause flat B naturals and F#’s when these notes are leading notes (goes for Eb tuba).

Valve pulling also takes strategies, if you play with set slides rather than adjusting on the fly.

Klaus

imslp (http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnk ... wBrass.pdf" target="_blank) 2nd movement Tchaik 6, measures 51 and 52, repeated in measures 146 and 147. In D, starting on 3rd space E and ascending up to C# with a G# in the middle, as for an E scale. As a double horn player I'm well schooled in how to use valve combinations to raise or lower pitch, but I had not gotten that far as to fiddling with valve combos with a tuner to see if I can raise it that way. I'll do that just to find out. The trombones are not, um, very well in pitch just overall, in this group. Some chords I can't even tell what chord it is supposed to be, and I'm pretty sure I've got my own pitch reasonably where it is supposed to be. I heard this from the percussion section when I was dallying on triangle a month ago. But with the unison, it just sounds bad, bad, bad. The C# was the worst; maybe I can use more valves and raise the pitch that way. But I have my valves set so I have room on both sides for intonation purposes; I'm not one who plays at the top of the slot. And I've never been a slide puller; even the 1st slide is hard for me to reach. And besides it's pretty much all the way in anyway.

It is only for the bassbone and the tuba in unison.

I would play the 3 first notes as 6th partials starting with 235 for the E natural. The C# at the top of the passage I would finger 23 as a 9th partial.

Klaus

The Kanstul version of the 18 has the 32mm cup and the "P" or .323 bore size, unlike the Bach 18 which has a larger throat. Also, if you want to stay with a PT mouthpiece in a 32mm cup, then the PT 30 has a little larger bore and a medium cup depth that might work.

Some years ago, Jeff Rideout and the Custom Tuba shop trailer stopped at the regional university where I live en route back to Michigan from Texas, and I got to play just about everything offered at that time. That included not only the tubas (If I were 25 years younger, I would have purchased a GR51), but also the entire range of PT mouthpieces. My experience in trying the range of mouthpieces correlates with Klaus' observations: the mouthpieces with the smaller throats didn't let a player support a larger tuba properly, and went flat in the upper register.

What I play now, for the same reasons, is the blokepiece Imperial with a 32.6mm Modified Helleberg rim (see my signature.) Something like this, with a 32mm rim, might work very well for you, although it is more of a funnel than a bowl. It also has the "P" drill bit size throat so you can get a little more air through it to support the register.

Note on "funnel" vs "bowl". No one really makes a funnel shaped mouthpiece, so we're talking about matter of degree - of course - but it's material to the question because this distinction can be expressed in different places in the cup profile. It can have a strongly sloped bottom with straight sides, it can have a flat bottom with sloped sides, it can have a small flattened/bowl area on the bottom and straight sides at the top with a long slope in between (the Geib profile has been represented that way here, never seen one myself.) And this is all a matter of fairly minute distinctions, with any intermediate shape perfectly viable. Is a Schilke 62 a bowl or funnel mouthpiece? Sure!

The PT-64 (which was the old PT-9) was sort of a standard for a while, for B&S-style F tubas. I used one back in the day, but when I switched to the Yamaha F tuba, it hopelessly bottled up the excellent low range of that instrument. I ended up using a contrabass mouthpiece (something by Warburton), but that allowed the sound to lose core, at least for me.

Later, when I added a B&S F tuba to the stable, I tried a Mike Finn MF-4, and it worked quite well on the large rotary F.

Now, I'm using a Sellmansberger Solo. It is also a bit more cup-shaped than the MF-4, which adds a bit of core to the sound, perhaps at the expense of some upper-register sweetness. It's a good balance for a biggish rotary F tuba--I don't sense any scale compression at all and the lower register does pretty well.

Reducing the throat diameter will lower (yes, lower) the center of the impedance curve and depress the pitch. Increasing the volume has the same effect. I'm therefore not sure that a smaller throat compensates for a larger cup, at least in terms of overall effect on pitch. But the influences are all superimposed on top of each other for any given combination of embouchure impedance, mouthpiece impedance, and instrument impedance, and some effects are often overridden by others. That's why I ultimately agree with Joe--you just have to try several and see what works for you.

Rick "whose upper register usually goes the other way" Denney

As for tuben’s question:

For me a wider and deeper cup implies a fuller sound and more pitch control. Flip side of that equation is that I have to practice more.

When I hunted for a compensating Eb tuba, I tried the Besson 983 with the DW3L following it. Too dry for my taste, so I asked for a larger mouthpiece, which I was warned against, as that tuba was considered very mouthpiece sensitive and I was supposed to go badly flat and be out of tune with my self with a larger mouthpiece.

Yet, they found a DW1L for me to try. No flattening, no going out of tune with my self, but still too dry for my taste. So I went with the Besson 981 as my choice of tuba.

I worked with the DW1L some months on the 981 and found I likely could get more sound out of the 981 than the DW1L would allow for. So I phoned Bob Tucci near Munich, and he very skeptically sent me a PT50. I fetched it an early Saturday morning in my PO-box and went home to practice. First warming up on my Conn 26K, which is more resistant than the 981. Very soon realising that the PT50 gave a better low range and a much freer high range. Especially the 10th partial was much easier to get up in tune on the 26K.

There was a one-tuba-half-brass-band party concert in the afternoon, where I used the PT50 on the 981. There I had to drink water between numbers, because my lungs dried out very soon.

Stayed with the PT50 for years and opened up the backbore to improve fullness on BBb basses also. Even bought one more PT50 to check whether I had ruined my first sample, but went on using the modified one.

For me the real problem with the PT50 is the lack of an inner edge of the rim. pp staccato takes very much attention to get clean. Still the sound was the fullest and warmest I have achieved. Pitch and range also very much to my liking.

Klaus

Thanks everyone for all the intelligent and knowledgable input.

Bass bone is being played by a tenor trombonist. I have not noted good intonation from him, in general. Sometimes he is actually between pitches. However, I can't fix him and would prefer to blend than create beats that rattle the chandeliers. I would love to get the trombone section in a room with me so I can teach them how to play major and minor chords without beats. Anyone can get it if the concept is demonstrated. Most have never heard of it.

I can easily hear, upon trying it, that 23 on that problem C# is higher in pitch than the 1 I was using. First valve in general, for me, on this instrument (Nstar Eb) and mouthpiece, tends to be a bit flat with valve slide all the way in.

I've had a couple of particulars suggested, but no one has answered whether I can try mouthpieces without spending $1000 on various ones I'm not going to keep. I already have that box full, and the PT 64 always comes out on top for playability for me, no matter the tuba. I did like the Chief I got from Wessex when I was trying their 3/4 BBb tuba, (and it went back with the tuba) but I don't think it would have worked on this one.

Mouthpiece makers are welcome to PM me with suggestions as to what might work, keeping in mind that something like a 7B (which I own) is too funnel shaped for my air supply, and my only perceived problem with the PT64 is a flat high range. Which I have not yet checked with a tuner, and which I will check with a tuner probably tonight. I was not flat on my 184 CC in the high range with that piece. (high range being E above middle C.)

Knowing the pitch tendencies of the various partials always is helpful. Cutting the rules very short says:

Too flat as a 5th partial => play as 6th partial by using the same fingerings as an octave below

Too flat as an 8th partial => play as 9th partial by adding valve tubing for a major second

A rather interesting discussion... bottom line is that making good mouthpieces for F-tubas is a challenge, particularly for large-bore rotary valve instruments that are quite common in our times. Function, ie: response and intonation, are primary concerns but working out a good balance of all factors and coming up with something that sounds good is like a chess game. One move affects many others...
The PT-64 has a long and successful history and goes back over forty years to a time where there was next to nothing in good F-tuba mouthpieces. I have some old mouthpieces that were used by professionals here in Germany at the time. These work well but all too small, with cup diameters less than 30 mm. The PT-64, with a 32 mm cup diameter was the answer. This evolved into the PT-65 at the time I moved from old hand-operated machines to a modern computer-controlled double-spindle lathe. With modern technology making changes in the throat bore, throat length, throat tapers, shank sizes, rim contours etc are quite easy. Getting back to our contempory instruments and the chess game, a combination of play-testing, a strobe-tuner etc and accurate written documentation of the changes made and some common sense can lead to a mouthpiece that serves the needs of many players. The PT-65 has a similar cup to that of the PT-64 but the backbore taper is wider. That is, the backbore opens up quicker on the PT-65. The "65" has become a successful mouthpiece. Just recently I reworked the "64". The semi-cushion rim of the past was changed to a narrower, flatter rim and the cup is a slightly shallower. The backbore remains slow taper but I did modify this to give the sound more center, more "punch". This favors low register response but getting back to the chess game: tightening the mouthpiece also tightens up the intonation. That is, the notes notch in strongly but cannot be pushed around too easily. The "alternate fingering" remarks comes into play. The remark about closing the main tuning slide is good: professional players invariably tune high and blow open. That in itself alliviates many intonation problems and, a relatively shallow mouthpiece can sound big. An F-tuba can never produce the sheer breath of volume that a good CC or BBb-tuba provides but it the tone color is right, live and with much presence, it will work quite well in large ensembles.

Recently and after working more than forty years on F-tuba mouthpieces I developed a mouthpiece based on a completely different concept, for our Bavarian tuba artist and virtuoso, Andreas Hofmeir. This mouthpiece, the AMH "Paul", has a 32 mm cup diameter like many F-tuba mouthpieces but the cup is much deeper and the backbore is very large. Whereas the "64" and "65" use a 6.8mm more, the throat bore of the Andreas Hofmeir mouthpiece is 8.85 mm. This mouthpiece works amazingly well; it sounds good, also in the low register, the intonation is good and the high range is quite managable.

Tuba players are fortunate to have a large selection of good mouthpieces nowadays. A person should simply try as many as possible in order to determine what works best. If a person can make music and "sing" on a certain mouthpiece without having to think about the mouthpiece itself, it is a good one.

As mentioned in another posting, I no longer supply PT mouthpieces to the former distributor. The most popular PT models have been moved to my new RT brand. This includes the revised "64"; the "65" will follow, mouthpieces for CC and BBb-tubas have the priority at this time.

Bob Tucci

I've found that shallow bowl shaped mouthpieces work well for me in the upper register (or all registers). I have three different mouthpieces that I use on my F tuba depending on the sound that I need. For orchestral paying I use a Tilz M2 mouthpiece as it gives a wider sound. For solo work I usually use the Miraphone TU27 "Rose Solo" model and for extremely high playing I use a Rudolf Meinl 7.8 mouthpiece which is quite small.

Many players prefer the PT65 on their small horns but for me it is a bit bright. I've found that the Rose Solo makes the tuning better on most F tubas and it gives the horn a nice sound with good resonance.

This is what works for ME.

Anything that speeds the air up will push pitch up as well. You might want to try the Schilke 69C4, which has the smallest throat of any commercial mouthpiece out there. The tighter backbore should speed the air up and push the pitch with it.

A manufacturer had a horn that played flat in the high register. To fix that, they made the porting of the first valve 1 mm smaller than the leadpipe. Problem solved as the restriction sped up the air and pushed the pitch where it belonged. I think you want to speed up your air and that should help.

Hapy New Year MaryAnn