Mouthpiece needed for 4th grade girl beginner.

[tbn.al]

IMHO: If she is too small in the face to center a tuba mouthpiece, then she needs to start on baritone or euphonium, switching later to tuba. Trying to play a bone mouthpiece stuck into tuba size tubing is just going to mess her mind up worse. If not now, then later when she switches back. Probably more than half of the posters on this site started on a smaller instrument ,even trumpet, and it didn't hurt them. That switch from baritone to tuba is really pretty easy even if you are a 55 yr old bone player like I was. It's a snap for a kid.

[iiipopes]

A good mouthpiece for a beginning eupher is a Schilke 50: just the tiniest bit smaller in diameter than the popular 51D, but a comfortable rim, and deep to get a round tone, but not too deep. I even have one myself for 2nd & 3rd trombone parts when I have to for my H N White era King 3B.

I just remembered: when I started in 5th grade band, there was a girl who wanted to play tuba. She started on euph and "graduated" to souzy (we didn't have tubas, only enough school budget for a few King fiberglass souzys that did double duty on both the field and in the auditorium) in junior high school. She started on a tuba book and just played everything up an octave for 5th & 6th grades. She ended up being one of the better players we ever had.

[tubaguy9]

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's a 'bone mouthpiece!!!!!!!!!!

Hey tubaguy....I think that's the point.

It's a good point -- if the smallest tuba mouthpiece you can get is still too large, there's a myriad of trombone/euph mouthpieces that covers the range between that and a 6-1/2AL. What you'd need is an adapter to fit the largest t/e mouthpiece she can comfortably use to a standard tuba receiver (and make the "mp + adapter" length equal to a tuba mouthpiece), and you could probably have one of those made at a machine shop (look in the yellow pages -- I just checked through Yahoo, and found them under

Business to Business > Manufacturing and Industrial Supplies > Metal Industries > Machine Shops

-- hope that helps).

In all reality, I'd maybe say try a 1 1/2 G mouthpiece if the regular tuba mouthpieces are too big. 6 1/2 AL will just screw it up even more.
That's what I meant by that post...