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Tubist of Time wrote:I've heard several horror stories about using a mouthpiece

Using a poorly suited mouthpiece is far from a horror story. Plug the mouthpiece in and balance between sounding good and feeling good. The perfect mouthpiece will not hinder an excellent product for a given situation on a given horn with a given player while allowing hours and hours of playing without fatigue.

If you can fit your whole head inside.

If even the bass-trombone player is impressed...

i am a doubler on tuba and bass trombone and i want you to know that i resemble that statement!!!!

i agree, when the bass trombone player is impressed, well, then you know...if there is no bass trombone player, well, check out for intonation problems; also, how is your control? if you feel like your whole face is falling in there (even though your sound is great) well, get out a crow bar...

A simplistic way of finding out could be to try to look for consistency of tone in the whole register of the horn. Awesome tone from your 3rd partial (one fifth above fundamental of your horn) and down, weaker tone an octave higher and up meaning mouthpiece is too big. Fatigue is a good clue too!

Of course if you can fit a minivan in there

I plugged a PT50 into a Getzen CB50 (or "G50" by that time) and couldn't play the sucker in tune to save the world.

I suspect that it was a case of a mouthpiece being too big, but I haven't done enough experimentation to say for sure. I got a similarly "what the...?" result with the PT50 on the King sousaphone I had in college -- it felt like I was blowing against a wall, whereas a Conn Helleberg would just honk and honk with no problem.

I'd think that a mouthpiece is too big if 1) you can't play in tune, and/or 2) you get tired (although rim size & shape can affect endurance, too).