Any good practice mutes to recommend for playing in an apartment environment

[Graham]

I opened my wallet for the new Yamaha Silent Brass and I couldn't be more pleased.

It was expensive -- $505 including tax in Canada -- but it arrived two days after I ordered it and it is wonderful.

I was most concerned about the noise level because my high-rise bachelor apartment is so small (under 400 sq ft) and I don't want any noise complaints. It reduces the audible sound to one that is comparable to buzzing on a euphonium mouthpiece. Louder than that, but not by much. If the TV is on, I can easily hear it over the muted euphonium, and I can play at any time of day or night without complaints from my neighbours.

With the headphones on I hear the full sound of my instrument. It's grand.

I would recommend it to other apartment dwellers.

It's a lot of fun to be able to play without worrying about bothering others -- I haven't felt this unrestrained in my ability to practice for a very long time.

[booboo]

My experience with various p mutes is that you either have the lightness and convenience of the travel mute types that fit in the bell and are terribly out of tune in at least one part of the range; or the poor portability and better playability of the full size. Of these the wick plays the best, but may not reduce the sound as much as say the yamaha. As Eupher6 says the yamaha is v heavy in situ, and the electronics are just a gimmick for most users of what is otherwise a fine mute.
Sold my yamaha and went back to a full size wick, and have the Mike maclean travel mute which is half the price of other travel mutes in the UK, and Mike is a little more up front about the tuning characteristics of his product. Also tried Wallace mutes which are beautifully crafted, but almost unusable intonation wise except in a back stage emergency warm up situation. I'd rather just play my mouthpiece if I'm honest.

[Eupher6]

I wound up buying the full-sized Wick mute for the apartment setting I'm in during the week. A couple of thoughts -- first and foremost, it keeps me practicing. There is no substitute for the horn plugged to your face, imho. Secondly, it really cuts down the sound and I find I want to find the center of pitch with it -- not sure about this, but I think it's a good thing to keep that air stream somewhat focused. Third, the low range down into the pedal is out of tune, but as long as I know that and don't get hung up about it, I'm not too worried. I don't spend much time in the high range because I'm fundamentally concerned with simply keeping the chops working. Any serious upper range work will have to wait until I get home on the weekends.

[ackmondual]

I have one of these and I think they are great...decent sound attenuation, decent pitch, and comfortable to blow. However I have noticed that whenever I play more than ~30 min or so I start to get some mild pain in my arm. At first I thought it was just me, but I watched Aaron Campbells YouTube video, and he reported the same thing. He recommended the Wick travel mute as a solution. I wanted to ask if anybody has tried this and the best brass? Any comparative comments would be appreciated

I believe you're referring to this?...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Denis-Wick-...YAAOSwySlaDTy1

I got that with my Yamaha YEP-321. it works well enough, but I'm with davewerden... the lower registers sound, "off". I supposed I could've gotten the non-travel version since I don't expect to need to travel with it, but I figured "better safe than sorry". If I'm willing to spend another $150, I could see myself trying them out side-by-side.

As far as "in tune" goes, I'm a bit ashamed that detecting that sort of thing is still difficult for me to do, so I can't really comment on that

[tonewheeler]

"Best Brass" if you can find one.

[urbie4]

Do any of the Bremner SSHH mutes work with a euphonium? I use their trombone practice mute for (unfortunately) almost all of my daily practice -- I'm mostly a trombonist and live in a condo where sound isolation is almost nonexistent, so I can't practice without a mute. The Bremner is by far the best trombone practice mute I've ever tried -- intonation is great, it's not too stuffy (including in the low register, where almost all mutes get troublesome), and all in all, it's really not bad at all, if you have to practice with a mute. But they don't make one specifically for euphoniums -- they do have one that's called "tenor horn," and it looks as though it might fit. Anyone tried it?

Thanks,

Urb

[davewerden]

Do any of the Bremner SSHH mutes work with a euphonium? ...

According to their website they don't have one for euphonium yet:

https://bremnermusic.co.nz/

Perhaps they will get around to it. I notice they have a tenor horn mute, so they are not just staying with orchestra brass.