Advice on Practice Mute for '70s Cerveny CC Piggy

[johnfuente]

Hey all. I have a late 70s Cerveny CC Piggy tuba. I am looking for advice on a practice mute that fits. What's the best way to go about this? Thanks. John

[fenne1ca]

I’d strongly advise you to look at Schlipf practice mutes. They come in a wide range of sizes, and their site (I believe) has a link to a pdf listing their sizes as matched with a wide range of common tuba models. If they don’t have Cerveny Piggy listed, you can e-mail them and they’ll get some measurements from you to make a good recommendation.

[johnfuente]

Mark and Chris,

Thanks for the help!

Mark, I think I'll try out the HB208 since I just need to shave off some dBs while my kids are sleeping two floors above. Ha!

Chris, your/my Cerveny has been FANTASTIC! I had a uniball conversion done by Dana Hofer here in Chicago land which has really helped the response. The guys in my jazz quintet love the sound and we're having a lot of fun working out arrangements where I double bari sax parts (when I'm not on bassline duty). It also sounds awesome through a Samson Airline Wireless mic system. Thanks again for a great horn.

[fenne1ca]

Mark,

I'm sorry to hear you had a bad experience. Maybe I just had a good experience unique to my horn at the time. That's why we do our best to try before we buy, eh?

[bort]

I tried one of those a couple days ago. I thought it was the worst thing ever, maybe worse than the old red and white humes and berg practice mute

Was it the correct size? The Schlipf that I had for my Miraphone 1291 was awesome and worked great.

The only reason why I sold it was because I realized that my neighbors didn't care at all if I played my tuba. So I simply didn't need a practice mute!

[bort]

Fair enough!

[marccromme]

I can tell you from 1st hand experience a humes and berg 208 aluminum mute fits a cerveny piggy like it was crafted by God himself, and maintains the same response and feel. Now that's not a practice mute,but it may reduce the boom and thunder enough that it could be used as an acceptable practice mute. If you really need a mute to take it down to a whisper volume and still want the horn to be playable, I don't have an answer for that one

I think the HB 208 straight mute and the HB practice mute have the same corpus, only difference is that the practice mute has three small holes in the perimeter (which do not hurt the sound of a straight, at least not for the HB bass bone mutes), and different form of cork. This suggests that you easily can transform the straight to a convertible by drilling three holes and adding a foam tape seal near the cork pieces. If you don't like it, it's reversible by closing the holes with tape. This works for my bass bone HB straight. Might work for your as well.