Posted by JoeS on January 30, 2003 at 21:08:16:
In Reply to: Mouthpiece Reccomendation posted by Nathan on January 30, 2003 at 18:47:33:
You won't be flying to a tuba superstore to audition fifty mouthpieces on your tuba, and even if you did, you would become confused after the first five.
If you can play a mouthpiece, use it. If you can't play it - at your level of experience be sure that some other mouthpiece is distinctly easier to play with no sacrifice in sound.
Here's something that's frustrating to me as a music retailer: parents - or even the high school students themselves - saying "I want this instrument/mouthpiece that I am purchasing today to be my final instrument/mouthpiece." Does that mean that their playing abilities and tastes will be total static for the rest of their lives? (How depressing!)
I would encourage you to not buy/use a mouthpiece because you saw it mentioned on tubenet, tubaeuph, eBay, or at the Army Tuba Conference. If you are steadily progressing and can play well with the mouthpiece you currently have, keep using it (again) until you have the opportunity to compare yours to another back-to-back and it is absolutely obvious that the new mouthpiece performs better than the one you are currently using.
Many, many students can progress very far with mouthpieces that are "laying around the school" or that are commonly found in local music stores, such as Bach 18, Conn Helleberg, etc. [Though this specifically-opinionated sentence absolutely ruins the overall "tone" of this post, the one mouthpiece that concerns me is the "24AW" type of mouthpiece because of its overly-wide rim possibly restricting the flexibility of many players.]
Joe "House, Car, and Mouthpiece Fever are all dangerous" S.