The Mouthpiece size arms race

[miketeachesclass]

For me, it's the opposite. My jaw, teeth and lips worth best together when playing a mouthpiece of the Wick 3 diameter. I started small, as did most everybody of my age (71), and progressed from 6 1/2 AL < Shilke 52E2 < 51D < SM4 < SM3/SM3U - Heritage 3AL - Alliance DC2 - Alliance E2. Along the way I tried a lot of others, but these are the ones I stuck with and played seriously. I can't make anything narrower work with my chops, because when they're fully warmed up and I'm playing strong my high range suffers with anything narrower than the Wick 3 size. Anything wider and my high range suffers again. So the wick 3 size is the goldilocks size for me.

Absolutely - again, physiology makes a difference.

I played a BB1 for a long time, but looking back, it wasn't a good piece for me. I just didn't know enough to figure that out.

The Alliance E2 does feel more comfortable to me than the SM3U. I played the original SM3 for quite a while also, but something about the articulation on that piece didn't work well for me.

As a guy who posted on the trombone forum used to write, "try everything and use what works."

I've definitely subscribed to this!

[Magikarp]

Unprofessional and Unpopular Opinion: 24mm is big enough.

There's a lot to say about cup volume, and I consider it the most important thing. Unfortunately, cup diameter does play a part. It's practically impossible to prove, but if you monkey around with enough instruments and mouthpieces, you can definitely feel the difference in how the instrument is reacting to the cup diameter. I tinkered with that whole idea of using the same cup diameter on everything and found out right quick that 24mm on a Euphonium does not feel like 24mm on a Bass Trumpet. Pretty expensive mistake, but YOLO.

As far as buckets and toilet bowls, yeah it works. A small enough Tuba mouthpiece is viable on a proper Euphonium, and it's hard as heck to play. Why bother? Even if I literally never play in another ensemble for the rest of my life, I want 8 partials.

My current go-to is a custom JK EU 12B. 24mm, ~5G depth. Big dark sound, but more focused than what I get from anything else on British Euph. Easy to play.

Unpopular? The word you're looking for is "wrong".

24mm is small even for a baritone horn let alone a euphonium. There is a sweet spot that allows projection with a full sound that doesn't distort at the daft dynamics composers seem to like writing for euphonium. That is, looking at catalogues from numerous manufacturers, 25.6mm-26.4mm.

As for eight partials - C, C, G, C, E, G, Bb, C that seems eminently sensible although modern concertos demand twelve or thirteen which is frankly excessive.

If Lyndon Baglin, Stephen Lord, Morgan Griffiths, Bob Childs, Graham McEvoy et al played like they did on the hooters they did making the sound they did on 4ALs then there's something in that combination that just works (caveat - for brass bands, there may be something different required when having to tolerate french horns or anaemic woodwind bleating).

[TheJH]

Agreed. 24mm diameter is unecessarily torturing yourself. As someome that started out on a Besson 5 mouthpiece, which is basically a Bach 7C with a insanely wide rim, until I was 18; that's what it's good for: a *starter's* mouthpiece. If I were to play a mpc with that size or smaller, my embouchure would literally start cramping up after a couple of minutes. There is a reason why the vast majority of people play on 25.4-26.4mm rims.

[mbrooke]

There's a video of Doug Elliott playing trombone with a 12C and his 104 rim set up. He sounds better with the 104, but not as much as you would think.

Mike

[notaverygoodname]

Unpopular? The word you're looking for is "wrong".

24mm is small even for a baritone horn let alone a euphonium. There is a sweet spot that allows projection with a full sound that doesn't distort at the daft dynamics composers seem to like writing for euphonium. That is, looking at catalogues from numerous manufacturers, 25.6mm-26.4mm.

Players used smaller mouthpieces than 25.5mm for decades. The Conn 3A is 22.5mm. The Besson 10 is 24.4mm (and is super deep). I'm quite satisfied with my sound on the JK EU12B and, for better or worse, that's all that matters. Don't really have anyone else to impress. Honestly, it's the only mouthpiece that has ever gotten me to enjoy the British Euphonium...

Agreed. 24mm diameter is unecessarily torturing yourself. As someome that started out on a Besson 5 mouthpiece, which is basically a Bach 7C with a insanely wide rim, until I was 18; that's what it's good for: a *starter's* mouthpiece. If I were to play a mpc with that size or smaller, my embouchure would literally start cramping up after a couple of minutes. There is a reason why the vast majority of people play on 25.4-26.4mm rims.

I moved to smaller mouthpieces for a reason. I didn't like my sound at 25mm+, and I didn't like how it felt to play. Could I play something bigger? Yeah, I guess. Not going to.


Now, having said all that, would I go smaller than 24mm on a Euphonium? Absolutely not. And anything shallower than a Schilke 44E4 at this diameter is...unpleasant.


Somewhat off-topic: The fact that Baritone Horns have managed to get away with the mouthpiece sizes that they have is actually a really impressive feat of engineering. The really dirt old mouthpieces are practically microscopic compared anything modern, and the horns let you know when you tamper with them. My Buescher Bb Tenor's stock mouthpiece (#20) is something like 21mm x 24.5mm. Now that's torture.

[hyperbolica]

This is an interesting question. As a trombone player who dabbles in euph, it was hard for me to form an idea of what the horn was supposed to sound like. My experience was with instruments that weren't like the Brit brass band euphs that seem to be the primary assumption these days. I started playing with a bass bone mouthpiece, about 1 1/4g. Recently I've realized that trombone and euph use different mouthpieces, with the Euph being a bit deeper. Now I've switched to a SM3 on euph. DE 104 on tenor bone, 1 1/4g on bass bone. Smaller "baritone-ish" instruments are still valid, even if not in the vanguard of elite euphonium players

Just to say that because of the ambiguity of the instruments identity, I think even a lot of low brass players aren't sure exactly what to expect from a "euphonium" and may not have a well defined sound concept for it. I know this was part of my mouthpiece selection difficulty - I wasn't really sure what it was supposed to sound like.

Now I'm regressing to a smaller instrument (and likely a smaller mouthpiece too) which I understand may not fit with other more traditional euph players, but it matches my internal sound concept.

The bass trombone has gone through the crazy size wars, and we joke about bass bones sounding like a slide euphonium.}

[Mark H]

I use a Bach 5 and have a 4 for when I want to do tuba-type stuff.

I got a Bach 3 for fun but I found the 3 just strangles the sound of anything above the staff, most cruelly I might add. Turned out to not be very fun at all.

The small mouthpieces pinch the sound, the big ones sit on the sound. Medium ones, Bach 5 or ish, seem to hit it just right.