Posted by Joe S. on September 25, 1999 at 21:16:51:
In Reply to: Req: Rudy Meinl info/mouthpiece sugg. posted by Andy Bryan on September 25, 1999 at 09:17:44:
There is a serious tuba player up there in the Chicago area named Ian Robinson (I hope I spelled his name correctly.) whom I believe works in a repair shop. I coverted my noisy metal-on-metal linkage on a RM4/4 that I used to own with a metal-on-plastic set-up that I designed. I sell the "kit" for about $40, if you are handy, and this linkage is all-black and offers a handsome appearance once installed. Note though that often much of the noise, even in metal-to-metal original linkage, can be adjusted out and the rest of it is usually up-and-down play in the rotor itself that can either be machined down to a near-perfect tolerance or remedied temporarily with medium-grade oil.
I have never been into the Arnold Jacobs mouthpiece thing, but my favorite Helleburg-style mouthpiece is the Marcinkiewicz "H" series (1=deepest to 4=shallowest). It, to me, has the least amount of "noise" in the sound that it helps me achieve on a large tuba. His mouthpieces are available for well under $100 (maybe around $60 from a nice guy), if that matters at all to you.