Benefits of Stainless Steel over Brass

[BBruce107]

Hi all,

I have been intrigued exactly why people have been switching to stainless steel mouthpieces over brass mouthpieces. I play exclusively stainless steel myself and know that it works for me but I am curious as to what advantages steel has over brass and vise versa.

[Voisi1ev]

Yeah they feel really great. Nothing wrong with liking gear if it makes you more comfortable.

My sweat/body chemistry levels tend to eat through anything, like my steering wheel, mouthpieces, radio dials, parts of horn that I touch.....so the finish not wearing off, at least I've got that going for me, which is nice.

I also picked up a Baer MMVI a few months and go and fell in love. It happens to be stainless.

[BBruce107]

I can totally agree with that. I found the feel of SS a lot like gold plating but with a lot more durability. I recently made the move to a Fossi CB piece on my CC tuba and play a Parker Hitz on F tuba. Both are so much more comfortable and I found that it has a lot less overtones and more fundamental in my sound. Maybe it is just me but I find them less bright of a sound.

[doublebuzzing]

One of the drawbacks, apparently, is that the stainless steel introduces some intonation quirks that are not present with regular mouthpieces. Chris Olka spoke about this issue and why he doesn't use SS mouthpieces on a facebook live stream about mouthpieces.

[Bill B]

Chris Olka was not talking about the intonation of the pitch itself, but rather about the strength of the overtones interfering with tuning of a section. In particular, he said the the 4th partial (major 3rd) is a lot stronger on stainless steel mouthpieces, and if the low brass is for example playing a g minor chord, with the tuba playing a G, the strength of the major 3rd in the tuba would work against the minor third in the the trombones making the group intonation and projection much less effective. I personally have no opinion on this theory, just passing it along.

[Robert Tucci]

As always, I read through postings. People have much to say and we have ears to listen...
Chris Olka for whom I have great respect brought out an interesting point as to hard metals. There are similarities with standard shell and heavy shell mouthpieces. Mine we make from good-quality extruded brass for valid reasons both from a manufacturing standpoint and in the final evaluation, for musical reasons. Hard material dulls overtone composition, stiffens response. Most current production instruments tend heavy: these do not benefit from such characteristics.

My base model "50" (RT-50 / PT-50 / PT-50L / PT-50+ / MB-50 (Canadian Brass) and the MR-P 5.0 all have the same cup. On the other hand, all have different shell weights. The lightest production model is the MB-50, the heaviest the RT-50+ or PT-50+. Normally and as required, I run some or all variations of this excellent and successful base model at the same time, give much attention to consistancy and good playing qualities. In addition to the above, I also made some very light ones, refered to as "skeletonized". Lining these up next to each other and using the same instrument, the response and tonal variations are fully obvious. The light-shell mouthpieces are rather flexible in tone and have a quick response. The one really heavy one, the RT or PT-50+, is the limit based on considerable experience. Anything heavier or harder (steel) would fall into the category of "limited use". At that and in due respect to others who work hard to make good products, there are players who sound very good on steel mouthpieces. This I will qualify: "If the results are what they percieve, all well and good" (add the extra cost...). The only other point of comparison would be with a mouthpiece made out of plastic. Good for freezing weather, otherwise of no practical value.

With RT / PT / CB (Canadian Brass) and other mouthpieces I make, we stay with brass; this gets the best results. As for plating: we polish our mouthpieces, cups included, to a brilliant finish, have a full-time chemist to monitor the in-house plating facility and have had practically no complaints about the silverplate on our mouthpieces. One or the other of mine have seen years of daily use: the silver is still there. Care is important of course. It is not advisable to set a mouthpiece down on it's rim surface for example.

Bottom line remains the same: people spend their hard-earned money for something that benefits them, not for the "features". Someone's remark sometime ago about the "Triple Blindfold Test" has validty. My personal testing has invariably been in large orchestras, most of the time with full-scale orchestral works. If a mouthpiece sound good and works well is such a situation, it is likely a good one.

Bob Tucci
Munich

[Donn]

Brass is indeed the only material that a serious player should consider, but let's not kid ourselves, you can't just buy a new brass mouthpiece and get the full benefit. The best brass mouthpieces reach their ideal tonal characteristics after years, really decades, of use, as the semi-crystalline metallic structure of the alloy slowly realigns, in harmony with its musical regimen. These are the mouthpieces, well known to the professional brass player, that play themselves, giving the player effortless control over pitch and nuance of expression throughout the compass, at every dynamic level.

[doublebuzzing]

If this works go to the 1:27:00 or so to see Olka's remarks about it

https://www.facebook.com/events/2737830 ... 235891535/" target="_blank

[Donn]

That explains the "4th partial (major 3rd)" part. The way I've heard it, I dare say the more common usage, partials start with the fundamental, 2nd partial is the octave etc. - in which case this would be the 5th. He's numbering them like the "harmonics", where 1st harmonic is 2nd partial.

Of course I don't buy the premise, that mouthpiece material "responds" to anything, but I wonder if some physical property of steel vs. brass could result in typical differences in throat or backbore shape, due to manufacturing issues. I have a hunch that's true with my Kellyberg - it's approximately like a Conn 120S and sounds approximately like my Faxx copy, but I bet a quarter if you get down into those tight spots, the similarity diminishes - they're different in a way that's somewhat consistent when comparing Kelly polycarbonate mouthpieces with Faxx or other plated brass, because of the way Kellys are made.

[doublebuzzing]

Making two mouthpieces with the exact same specs (one stainless steel, one brass) and doing a spectrographic analysis of those two mouthpieces in the same tuba with the same player and getting markedly different readings sounds closer to science than opinion to me.

[Donn]

That's true. It would be interesting to see the details. Classic science tends to mighty particular about that - methodology - number of trials, experimenter bias, stuff like that. The key question to me seems to be, how much do we know about how identical the mouthpieces were?

[Doug Elliott]

In machining, as in drawing tubing, comparing the effect of different materials isn't always totally valid because the exact same manufacturing process can end up with different dimensional results.

That can also be true of two examples made from the SAME material, but it's exaggerated when you change materials.

[royjohn]

I think this is an interesting discussion, but maybe the phrase "cannot be determined from the information given" applies here. The depth of silver plate is about 0.0005" and manufacturing tolerances on a mpc which has an inside diameter of over 1.30" is nowhere near this accurate. As far as buffing, it takes some heavy handed doing to buff off the silver plate on a rim. Not saying it isn't easy to do if you are so inclined or if you have no skill in buffing, but the truth is that silver plate, while it will acquire myriad micro-scratches, will hold up pretty well with reasonable care. and could be buffed to a shine and replated without much loss of dimension.

I have silver plated, gold plated and stainless mouthpieces here, all used. All show some scratching, albeit the stainless scratches are smaller than those in the plated mpcs. However, all still slide on my face with the ounces and pounds of pressure typically used with a tuba without that much difference. Can I feel the difference between them? Yes. Is it that significant. IDK.

Absent some kind of scientific research, probably with an artificial embouchure, I think these discussions will remain a matter of opinion and preference and you know what they say about opinions.

Sitting back now to await the smart-*** comments.
royjohn