Mouthpiece Bowl Shape Information?

[tbn.al]

Does anyone know where one might find a list that includes the bowl shape of various mouthpieces? Something as simple as Bowl/Funnel might do although the degree of Bowlness/Funnelness would be nice. I've read a lot of information on this subject in various places including this forum, but I would like to find an easily understandable compilation, if one exists.

[Tom Holtz]

If only one existed... That would be a worthy research project, however futile it may turn out to be.

[imperialbari]

I understand the wish for such table. However I don’t believe non-top-level-math scientist would benefit from abstract formulas telling of curve formulas. Verbal descriptions tend to be very subjective.

Is it Klier who indicates the bowl shape by profile curves, which are not eact, yet give a general idea about the mouthpiece.

With many mouthpieces now made by means of CAD/CAM it would be possible for makers to make profile curves public, but maybe that will not happen due to fear of pilfered knowledge. The closest I have seen is Osmun who makes the curves of his horn mouthpiece rims public available on his site.

Klaus

[Donn]

If we got organized enough, we could make a mouthpiece museum and publish photographs and measurements. The mouthpieces would be donated - and destroyed, cut in half on the diameter.

[iiipopes]

If we got organized enough, we could make a mouthpiece museum and publish photographs and measurements. The mouthpieces would be donated - and destroyed, cut in half on the diameter.

There is no need to destroy them, and they should not be destroyed. Kanstul uses laser computer scans for their "comparator." All that is necessary, and I understand it's a big chore, would be to license the hardware and software to do it for tuba mouthpieces.

[Matt G]

Couldn't the profile be done with some sort of molding polymer that is allowed to set in the bowl/cup of the mouthpiece? That could be used to cast a replication of the original piece that could be cut in half on the vertical axis to use as a comparison.

[tbn.al]

What is needed is a proceedure that we could all handle without any special equipment or training so that we could all map our mouthpieces and report to the group. Isn't there some kind of wax that could be melted and poured into the cup(having the venturi plugged). After it had set up one could heat the mouthpiece a little and extract the solid chunk of wax. It would be a pretty simple job to cut the block in half, trace around the perimeter on a piece of graph paper and scan the tracing to a .pdf or .jpeg. If you wanted to compare two mp's just pull them up side by side on your screen and look. I wouldn't need to get to the .001 mm scale to see what I wanted to see.

[Art Hovey]

I did that with ordinary paraffin about 47 years ago, and it was not difficult. I still have the tracings on file for the two or three mouthpieces that I had at that time. It is interesting to see how little difference there is between "bowls" and "funnels". There is much more difference between the venturi shapes of the throats.