Posted by Klaus on December 03, 2001 at 22:26:17:
In Reply to: Re: Re: The Greatest mouthpiece.........? posted by Lew on December 03, 2001 at 21:35:59:
You are right, Lew!
But what I like about my Conn Helleberg is the flat rim with the quite sharp inner edge. My preference comes from my playing very different mouthpiece sizes, when I play my smaller brasses. If I do not have a quite sharp rim, getting precise attacks takes too much attention.
I play all my trumpets, cornets, flugels, horns, alto, mello, and soprano trombone on an 18mm flat, narrow, and sharply edged Gardinelli rim with horn underpart from Gardinelli, cornet underpart from Denis Wick, and trumpet underpart from Marcinkiewicz.
On alto and tenor bones plus baritones, I play DW 7, 6, and 4 models with A, B, and C cups. Denis Wick makes the best mouthpieces to produce the sound and give the feel I like. Sadly he limits his model range in a few ways. He has no screw rims and the material he uses is not easy to make custom threads in. And then he does not make really big mouthpieces.
Hence I play euph and bassbone on the ultimative execution of the DW ideas. Only it is made by Yamaha and carries Douglas Yeo’s signature.
For tubas I had to compromise about my rim/edge ideas, when I found the DW 1L resticting. So there I use the PT-50. The sound rewards the extra effort. But it is not an all-round mpc to recommend to younger people. It just takes air, air, and air. Which makes me hate to play continuous rock type bass lines in band. After 32 bars my lungs are dry as Sahara. But for my preferred organ- or stringbass-like classical basslines the PT-50 is the real thing on the York Master or Conn 40K BBb’s.
Why I am not bothered by sharp edges? My upper front teeth are figured in a way, that excludes any mpc pressure anyway. I am just so much against braces. I went through that circus induced by a snobbish mother. And achieved a speach impairment in turn. 10 years later, during a concert, my teeth in one explosive move jumped back to their original position. I still speak like an innercity ghetto kid (no racial slur, we have such ones milky white over here), which I never was, but that sharp edge on the inside of my upper lip gave me some motivation to learn how to handle an embouchure.
Thank you for sustaining this novel! Sorry for the non-dentist commercial, but I actually happen to be in a very friendly relationship with my present dentist. Hej Rainer, vi se på onsdag! (I will go there on Wednesday!)
Klaus