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Mary Ann wrote: ↑Tue Aug 13, 2024 8:51 am That lesson was years ago; it concerned horn and dystonia. I think we are cross-talking for some reason but whatever. My casual question has ballooned into a TFFJ saga.

Yeah, we do tend to toot our own horns (pun intended.)

I have played a Yamaha YBH-621S in a British brass band for a couple years now, and a year ago went on a mouthpiece discovery kick. My bias going into it is that I'm striving for a distinctly brighter sound than euphonium, which it seems may be less in vogue over the past decade or so; there is a trend toward increasing bore sizes and overall mellower sound from what I've gleaned from the Internet.

My baritone came with a Yamaha 45C2, which is on the small size, with a shallow cup. I blamed low register response issues on the instrument until discovering that mouthpieces solve the problem. I settled on the Denis Wick SMB9, and am extremely happy with the tone, as well as with response throughout the entire range. The only down side is that it requires a bit more embouchure stamina in the upper register than some of the others I tried. I've seen (and heard) other people get good results with much bigger mouthpieces, e.g. the Shilke 51D, but they are terrible for me with the baritone (tone and intonation suffer), even though they work well with my euphonium.