What do YOU think?

[tclements]

Since I bought my new tuba, I have been farting around with mouthpieces. Current wisdom says that a mouthpiece should go in 3 cm (1.18"). Currently, I am playing 2 tubas mostly. This is the result of TODAY'S test:

Mouthpiece YamaYork Wessex ‘Presence’
Mirafone TU33 1 1/2” 1 1/2”
30H (US) 1 7/16” 1 5/16”
32C (Eu) 1 1/16” 15/16”
(while I didn’t try it for this experiment, I am ASSUMING the 32B will fit the same)
Hammond 31LB 1 1/4” 1 1/16”

When I worked with Doug Elliott, he told me the mouthpiece should go in 1", EXACTLY.

Like I told Jerome Stover, in MY day, we just jammed the mouthpiece in and practiced!

Waddya think?

[bloke]

It's humorous to me that people think that all receivers are the same length (towards the player) from the choke point, and that they also believe that receivers' tapers always start at the same diameter.

I can just see someone making some statement regarding some sort of absolute while they're bobbing the top of their head to the left and to the right while saying it.

If you soliciting answers to the question, my answer is that a ton of people can be talked into just about anything, if not absolutely anything.

[bone-a-phone]

That Doug Elliott figure applies to trombones using his mouthpieces. He has different shanks for instruments with different receivers most notably Olds and Kings. Not sure what the tuba insertion depth is supposed to be. Doug knows a little bit about mouthpiece design. His pieces have really improved my playing noticeably. Of course how things are designed and how they actually work might be somewhat different. For years I screwed in non-Remington mouthpieces into my Remington receivers until something deformed enough to fit without wobbling.

[bloke]

I'd keep the end of the mouthpiece away from the choke point, and certainly avoid stabbing one past that point into the mouthpipe tube.
As far as "how much exposed reverse taper via exposed receiver interior surface is ideal", anyone who can speak authoritatively can come up with some sort of convincing distance, and reasons for it.

I'm also in favor of avoiding particularly thick metal on the end of a mouthpiece shank...my reason: "because".

bloke "I'm through drawing pictures and attaching them."

[Kevbach33]

The Bach mouthpiece catalog lists their tuba mouthpieces as seating 1⅛" into a standard receiver. Curiosity got to me, so here are measurements on my tubas, done crudely with tape and tape measure since I'm to cheap to buy digital calipers...

Mouthpiece Wessex Bombino F Schmidt 2103
Wessex Sax1 1 7/16" Does not seat
Kellyberg 1⅛" 1 5/16"
Laskey 30G US 31/32" 1 3/16" (best fit)
Perantucci PT-84S 1⅛" (best fit) 1¼"
Perantucci PT-36 13/16" 1"

Notes: I'm guessing my little Eb has a contrabass trombone size receiver, just slightly smaller than standard (a Wick no letter doesn't fit). The 2103 is definitely a standard receiver. Wessex piece is an unknown, smaller-than-standard shank size. PT-36 is Euro shank (or a smidge smaller). Best fits are of what I own and how they respond in the tuba.

I'd say that, depending on the tuba in question, an insertion depth of anywhere between 1 1/16 and 1¼" will work so long as the points @bloke makes are kept in mind. Ymmv.

[Schlitzz]

Since I bought my new tuba, I have been farting around with mouthpieces.

When I worked with Doug Elliott, he told me the mouthpiece should go in 1", EXACTLY.

Like I told Jerome Stover, in MY day, we just jammed the mouthpiece in and practiced!

Waddya think?

1" ? Sounds a little small....

[donn]

I have a couple favorite mouthpieces that go in almost all the way. Marcinkiewicz H1 and H4, and Dillon F2 (Warburton?)

How far do they go in? I don't know ... why would I care? I don't expect they go in so far as to cause a ny problem - they're standard .530 in at the small end, and my tubas seem to have ordinary receivers.

What counts is what's inside the air passage, right? So I tried to measure the distance from the top of the throat, to the top of the receiver. Marcinkiewicz is real small, like half an inch; F2 is maybe twice as tall, almost an inch. Hm.

Now, I have a Dillon M1C that ought to be somewhat like the F2, but doesn't work as well for me, and it turns out that the shank end is .555. Here the throat is a half inch farther out, and I guess that's too far. Would it have helped if they'd cut the shank longer, at the .530 point on the taper? Ha ha, I don't think so. It would go in farther, but that wouldn't make all that much difference, would it? I guess they'd have had to cut the backbore a little tighter so there'd be some metal there, and the shape of the backbore/receiver area would be a little different, but I sure wouldn't bet on the outcome.

What I'd want is a mouthpiece that goes farther in, but the whole mouthpiece, not just the shank, and I don't have any standard for how far that should be. Marcinkiewicz, Dillon, really different here.

How about my sousaphone bits, which don't seat mouthpieces as deep? Gah, I don't know if there's really any critical dimension here. The smaller shanked mouthpieces do seem to make better noises, though.

[MikeMason]

Trial and error-mostly error

[bloke]

How many people - who have really specific opinions on this topic - own inside micrometers... or even outside micrometers or dial calipers...or - to be able to be proactive - a #5 Jarno (or the nearly exactly the same particular Morse) reamer?

Is there going to be a universal ideal insertion depth, no matter what the model of instrument and no matter what the model of mouthpiece?

Pretending that every tuba mouthpipe starts at the same small end bore size and every single standard shank tuba mouthpiece receiver inside dimensions starts at exactly .5XX inch diameter, then do all standard shank tuba mouthpiece receivers extend back towards the player exactly the same length from that same exact starting point, or are some shorter or longer than others?

How much less similar are 5/4 size tubas compared to .547 inch bore trombones? Could it be a little bit easier to be a trombone mouthpiece shank and receiver expert than a tuba mouthpiece shank and receiver expert?

It's possible to be scientific about this, but if we are to be scientific about it, then we need to be scientific about being scientific, rather than being scientific about being random.

Some people have never seen those really short and smaller-inside King tuba receivers from about thirty years ago, and some of the older Miraphone receivers that are short as well. If someone owns a mouthpiece with a longer shank (due to the fact that - as one set of examples, as with the Bachs and knockoffs - there's not a big blob of metal surrounding the cup on the outside), and the receiver on the instrument is short, YET the mouthpiece goes in to the receiver and stops about an eighth of an inch shy of the choke point (where the mouthpipe starts), should they be fretting, or should they be practicing the music that they're going to be performing next week?

I like what I read in Donn's post.

[tclements]

I love these discussion. THANKS GUYS!!!

[PlayTheTuba]

Well for the mouthpieces that I am able to instead further (the ones with the small tuba shanks), when I use them, I prefer that they are deeper into the tuba. Never played around with the tubas that feature adjustable receivers though.

[donn]

In terms of "what receiver size do I have?" ...

In Doug Elliott's classification, one my tubas is on the "E" list and the other seems about the same. That I think accounts for typical mouthpieces off the shelf for the last half century. My Marcinkiewicz mouthpieces at a bare .520, and the Dillon F1 that effectively might as well have been sawed off to .530 with a shorter shank, would be "Am" - and I like to play them on my supposed-to-be-E tubas. If I were going to PT land, I guess I'd consider fraudulently representing my receiver as an "S". These smaller "American" used-to-be-standard shanks go in pretty close to the end of the shank area, within 1/8 inch, and the sound seems to sort of open up.

[dp]

That year I took some lessons from Keating on the whole tone the 2nd lesson we spent futzing around with tape on the shank of my C9 and eventually settled in on what he said worked the best. The 3rd or 4th lesson he suggested I try the Dillon Geib MPs, and when I got home that summer I ordered some from Matt and when they came in I completely forgot about that taped up C9 for 20+ years? I returned to the C9s after a year or two but just a couple weeks ago I pulled out a box of MPs to clean up (remember when I told you about that) and one of the MPs in a black pouch was that taped up C9, but the memory still didn't register til I saw this thread! Now I got something to mess with just in time for springtime in colorful Colorado!

[russiantuba]

The gap is more important than how far it goes in. To me, this is a visual effect.

[donn]

There's a gap?

[bloke]

There's a gap?

yeah...This word drives me nuts - particularly in regards to almost all modern soldered-on receivers (whereby the small end of the mouthpipe tube is flush with the small end of the receiver interior).