Mouthpiece Rim Sizes

[bbuxx2026]

Im in the market for a new mouthpiece, I play a big 4/4 Piston Jupiter (1110). Im currently playing a older Schilke Helleberg which has a badly dented rim and shank but i like the size. A few weeks ago i played a Denis Wick 5L Heritage for a weekend which is a lot smaller but i got way more range and better sound but not much more volume. I own both Conn Mps, Miraphone Tu27, bach 24AW and 25. I came to the conclusion i like the sharper rim contour and smaller cup diameter like the 7b and Schilke Helleberg and the narrow rim of the 5L . I was looking into buying a Sellmansberger which a fellow band mate recomends heavily, A Doug Elliot mp i like the idea of personalizing the parts to what i like but it certainly comes at a larger cost. Would a smaller mp work on big horn or would i be better off getting a bigger size and adapting. Please recommend mps and your experinse is greatly appreciated as a younger player.

[Schlepporello]

Sellmansberger mouthpieces are very good, that's why I own one. First and foremost, get away from the traditional silver-plated brass mouthpieces and spend the extra buck on a good stainless steel mouthpiece. Your face will thank you for it. Your lips will be far less prone to breaking out in rashes if you do.

[bloke]

I'd be delighted to sell you a mouthpiece.
Heck, I like them a whole lot.

You said you like a Schilke Helleberg except for its condition. Again, I'd love to sell you one of my mouthpieces, but what about a Schilke Helleberg in better condition?

Even this place only attracts a few hundred or a few thousand people who look around here, and the few dozen who regularly post will give you that many different answers on what they like, and most of us don't even know anything about too many other things other than what we have.

[bbuxx2026]

Do you make a mouthpiece close the the size of a Schilke Helleberg?

[bloke]

Do you make a mouthpiece close the the size of a Schilke Helleberg?

As some people here know, I've been messing around with a regular silver plated brass one piece hybrid version (several differences) of their Helleberg II model, but I still want to make one last alteration, because I think that the first version's throat diameter is too large, at least for my liking.

Does Schilke not sell them?

Truth be told, I'm personally not a fan of the Helleberg design spectrum, but this whole pursuit is an attempt by me to see if I can come up with a version of that style of mouthpiece that I personally actually do like. I decided to undertake this, because such a large percentage of players play mouthpieces with this general cup shape, and I just began to wonder if the only reason I don't like it is because of something other than the cup, such as the back bore or - in particular - the rim styles that typically accompany them.

[bbuxx2026]

My “Local” music store are able to get them but there more than i’ve seen online, the only other place is mouthpiece express but i haven’t heard great things from them. I’m always looking for people selling them but i can’t find them, also im not sure if i like the cup or them i haven’t had any complaints about it but i do like the rim very much but the cup of the denis wick a lot

[russiantuba]

I am assuming Joe still offers a free trial on the mouthpieces too if you wanted to try.

I use a Sellmansberger on my CC and F. Honestly, I have always liked the C4 rim. I played on a copy of a Conn Geib prior, which had a nice,rich sound, but didn't get the core I wanted. I did some searching and eventually came back to a Symphony I had purchased years ago that was on loan to a student (I had tried an extended up solo no. 2 backbore). I have used that on my big horn since 2018 or 2019 and it is similar to the Geib, but better.

I have a REALLY good Mirafone C4 mouthpiece from the early 1980s. It is getting wore out, and besides getting it re-plated, I needed the shank adjusted for my F tuba. I contacted Joe and he suggested his Solo #0. I admit, I was a bit adamant about it since it was a bit smaller and more direct of a sound, but it was the same cup. I actually like it better, and is more efficient.

If you find a rim you like, and your playing style changes, Joe offers other cups and I believe (not 100% sure) the rims are compatible with the Parker signature line of mouthpieces too.

[Mary Ann]

If you like the narrowness of the 5L (I also like how it acts in my Eb, but do not think it's the best thing in a contrabass) then you could look at the JK line of cups because you can get a deep but narrow cup in their line.
However, if you are at that stage of progress where you are trying different cups to try to solve playing problems, pick a middle of the road one and just stay there and work out your problems on that one. Once you get to a certain level you won't be flailing about trying this and that cup. Trust me on that. Something like a 7B might be a moderate cup to learn on.

[bloke]

If you are looking for something that's not yet bunged up, but are raising your eyebrows at the prices of branded mouthpieces, why not purchase one of those Chinese conn helleberg knockoffs that are on eBay for about 25 bucks?

I don't see much mention of rim sizes in your original inquiry, but I did notice you raising the issue of cost.

I'm not trying to be a so and so, but I do tend to be blunt and strive to get down to what's real (as quite a few have noticed over the years). I've based every response here on things that I've read in your posts in this thread, and you may also notice that I haven't made a single attempt to advertise.

[bbuxx2026]

Cost in not much of a issue ive been saving for this but was wondering the the cost of a custom mouthpiece is worth the extra cost.
Ive been playing a bigger mouthpiece size wise, a Miraphone tu-25 (32.7mm) rim and a Conn 120 (32.5), both bigger than what i usually use the Schilke Helleberg (31.8mm) Rim. I liked the size of the 120 but the deep cup and backbore of the Tu-25. I know Doug Elliot makes a 32.5mm narrow rim which sounds like it would be like the DW which i really liked with the size of the Conn, and there is a Sellmansberger 32.3mm which sounds nice being between sizes of the conn and my current piece.

[donn]

Don't make too much of published inside diameters. Between different models from the same maker, you can probably have some confidence in the comparison - e.g., Schilke 66 is 0.32 mm narrower than Schilke-Helleberg. That's a pretty small difference, of course, but at least they're measuring the same thing. (And the 66 is a better mouthpiece.) Between say Bach and Schilke, all it takes is for the standard measuring technique to hit the curve at the rim a little different, and your fraction of a millimeter becomes total nonsense.

Expensive custom mouthpieces are worth every penny if they happen to work well, but that's pretty much random luck plus the buyer's psychological need to have done OK. Great players have played what came with the tuba from the factory.

[bloke]

People who've bought more expensive mouthpieces are the only people who know whether it's worth it, and Donn pretty much spelled it out. It needs to be a more expensive custom mouthpiece that works really well for the person who's buying it for to be so-called "worth it". One thing's for sure, and it's that people who haven't jumped up into that price and category of mouthpieces - for whatever type of wind instrument - don't know whether it's worth it, regardless of how suitable a particular mouthpiece is, because they are on the sidelines. I'm still not trying to get you to buy any of my stuff, and - truth be told - that one I just told you about that's cheap (eBay) is not a bad mouthpiece. When I fix up and sell stuff like used tubas and sousaphones to schools, I buy those things and put them in with those instruments.

I'll only disagree with Donn about one thing. Small changes can make a noticeable difference. An analogy is a repaired tooth with a filling that is two or three thousandths of an inch too tlall and hitting its opposing tooth too soon. That's pretty miserable. Mouthpieces that aren't ideal for someone aren't necessarily miserable, but - well.. - they're not ideal. The only way to find mouthpieces that are closer to ideal for a particular player and their particular instrument is to probably try a bunch of mouthpieces and try to be extremely objective. It requires a lot of time and usually buying more mouthpieces than one might prefer to own. The typical pattern is that people buy something that obviously works better for them, and use it until they find something that works even better for them. That's why a lot of people (who aren't interested in this sort of pursuit) play stuff like Bach 18, Conn Helleberg, Schilke, and things like that. They don't want to spend a bunch of money, they don't want to spend a bunch of time, and they don't want to own a whole bunch of mouthpieces just to find something that's a little better.. or sometimes a lot better. It's the same with other stuff like golf clubs, tennis rackets, cars, you name it.

Asking a large group of strangers such as us (even though older and maybe even quite experienced) which mouthpiece to buy isn't going to answer any questions for you. This is something that you will have to figure out for yourself, and if you keep playing the tuba throughout your life, you may change your mind about which mouthpieces are the most suitable for you, and you may change your mind several times. In the past, I studied with some highfalutin and high reputation players, and switched to the mouthpieces that they were using for a while. That never worked out. Their advice worked out, but not their mouthpieces.

The thing that I would be cautious or slow about is to buy something because some amazing player uses it. That's the sort of error that people - who do stuff fairly well - make with all sorts of things again like golf clubs and tennis racquets and cars.

My mouthpieces have been mentioned in this thread enough to where I think I can make one comment about them:
You can put cups, rims, and shanks together in over a thousand ways that will bolt up properly, and actually way more combinations than that (whereby the components bolt up without the interior surfaces meshing nicely, but those really don't count). When someone says that "Sellmansberger mouthpieces are great", they're talking about one particular rim, one particular cup, and one particular shank. That having been said, there are some combinations that I sell over and over and over.
===========
My post here is too long to read without losing interest in reading it, here's a summary of it: "yada yada yada"

[donn]

I'll only disagree with Donn about one thing. Small changes can make a noticeable difference.

My main point about the problem with diameter shopping is that measurements of unlike mouthpieces and/or by different measurers, can vary far too much to be reliable. I think you have mentioned that rim shape is a factor here, that may make a mouthpiece play in some respects as if it's larger or smaller than one with a similar cup but different rim. But I'm skeptical of published measurements at all, because as I mentioned it isn't like measuring a square thing. So yeah, if tiny differences are significant, then they're significant, but don't rely on David Werden's tuba mouthpiece chart to sort that out for you.

But look at 1/3 of a millimeter, and consider that half of that is going to be on one side of your mouth and half on the other, so in a sense it's a 1/6 mm difference in placement. I don't know, that's pretty small. How big is a gnat's eyelash anyway? I'm predestined to be an unbeliever here, because of snaggle teeth that more or less preclude any anatomically precise fit.

[bloke]

radius vs. diameter

also: "How curved a rim profile is" can cause a cup to feel wider or narrower.

duh, bloke

yeah...but someone had to point out the obvious.

[bloke]

Do you make a mouthpiece close the the size of a Schilke Helleberg?

As some people here know, I've been messing around with a regular silver plated brass one piece hybrid version (several differences) of their Helleberg II model, but I still want to make one last alteration, because I think that the first version's throat diameter is too large, at least for my liking.

Love to try one when they're ready!

[Heavy_Metal]

I made that last post- how come it was ascribed to @bloke ? @LeMark ?

[Heavy_Metal]

I made that last post- how come it was ascribed to @bloke ? @LeMark ? @matt g ? @Schlepporello ?

[LeMark]

I have no idea. That is really odd

[Schlepporello]

Witchcraft!!

[bloke]

uhh...