TubeNet

Question: Do other brass players (trumpet, French horn, trombone/euphonium players) fixate on mouthpieces threads as much as we tuba players seem too? I don't think they do, but my music contacts/knowledge/exposure is not nearly as developed as others on this forum. If I am correct, and we do fixate more than others, is it because our mouthpieces threads have more configuration/variation possibilities than other instruments' mouthpieces because our mouthpieces threads are so much larger? This may seem like a silly question, but I really am curious. (Note: I am not immune from this fixation, although I am not as bad as I used to be. Perhaps I can be classified as a "Recovering Tuba Mouthpiece Thread Addict". I do try not to miss too many RTTMA meetings. )



old"tounge planned firmly in cheek"bandnerd

I always thought trumpet players were the ones always searching for that new magic mpc that does everything for them.

bloke wrote:I know own MULTIPLE glitter-gold Kellybergs, and the rest of you can shove it.

Tease.

I have frequently posted the advice that a beginning or returning player should read a standard mouthpiece thread of proven historical accuracy, and learn to read about mouthpieces using that thread. That list of archetypes would include threads about the sharpness of the Conn Helleberg rim and the cheapness of the Bach 18 clones. I might be tempted to add one of the Geib threads, though many of those were started by me and therefore not a good example of a typical mouthpiece thread. Maybe after several years, newbies will have progressed to the point where they have the tools to participate in a tuba mouthpiece thread.

It takes some progress in writing about mouthpieces before the subtleties of mouthpiece descriptions can be exploited or even detected. I wrote about mouthpieces for a LONG time and could not tell whether what I wrote meant anything or not. It's really only been more recently that I've been persuaded myself that I haven't just wasted words (again).

And then, I give a mouthpiece thread at least a three-month trial, and then compare it with previous mouthpiece threads, before deciding if the new one has become as stupid as the old one. So, even though I've written in a lot of mouthpiece threads, I have really made it to the end of the threads quite rarely. The mouthpiece thread about the mouthpiece I use on my Miraphone is only the third in my history (17 years) with that tuba. The York Master's mouthpiece threads are numerous, alas, as the Holton's mouthpiece threads. The Yamaha F tuba is on its second mouthpiece thread (after the initial foolishness about using a large mouthpiece on a small tuba), and the B&S mouthpiece thread, which redefined the Yamaha mouthpiece thread, has been cloned many times.

We expect a lot out of Tubenet, and many threads there deliver our expectations only imperfectly, no matter how good we might be at pontification. So, we try to tailor Tubenet threads to specific objectives using the mouthpiece thread. This is all perfectly normal, and does not strike me as obsessive. Stupid, maybe. Even Arnold Jacobs experimented quite a lot with mouthpieces threads, back before they were written down. When I see double-reed players fiddling with their reed threads (which they, of course, write themselves, improbable as that seems), I think that a tuba player having participated in a couple of dozen mouthpiece threads over as many years is probably not that pathological. Stupid, maybe.

Rick "who sometimes learns by reading mouthpiece threads...nah" Denney

whatever

And all this time I didn't even know mouthpieces HAD threads. They must be really, really tiny, but then again I guess we wouldn't be twisting it into the leadpipe if it didn't have threads, and it wouldn't get stuck in the leadpipe unless we got it cross-threaded.

MA