Posted by Rick Denney on February 20, 2001 at 14:55:45:
This is long, so be warned.
After a month of conflicting schedules and telepone tag, I finally found my way to suburban Maryland for a visit to Doug Elliot's shop.
It was quite an experience.
My intent was to find a mouthpiece for my York Master that would give me the sound I know this horn has in it, while also sorting out some intonation problems. The receiver on the horn was just slightly larger than a bass trombone, and the only mouthpiece with acceptable intonation in the normal band-playing range was a Wick 1. I wondered if it was the shape of the Wick that helped the intonation, or the narrow taper that allowed it to seat deeply in the receiver. With the Wick, the horn was reasonably in tune (except for the usual flat 5th partial) up to about F on the staff, above which it tended sharp. Waaaaay sharp. I was considering a tuning stick and other potential solutions, in case Doug could not help me. Frankly, I had my doubts that all the problems were solvable with a mouthpiece alone, and I entered his tiny workshop somewhat a skeptic.
First, a note on his workshop. It's small. I mean really small. But in it he has four large lathes, lots of tools, cabinets full of partially and completely finished mouthpiece parts, an assortment of calipers, hole guages and micrometers, a small cleanup area with two buffing stations, and one chair--clearly reserved for guests. Pasted on the wall were notes providing the details of this and that, and each lathe had notebooks on music stands with his notes on the lathe setup for each component and shape. He does everything in this small shop except plating. As with most specialized machine shops, it was obvious that he'd spent a lot of time making special tools to make the job easier and more repeatable.
The first thing Doug did was measure the receiver. I was only a little surprised to discover that the receiver had nearly no taper at all--it was almost cylindrical. This meant that the mouthpieces were seating on the outer edge and tended to rock a bit. It also meant a big gap around the tip of the shank. A little exploration confirmed what had been told me what Chuck had said--the mouthpipe is one continuous piece, swaged inside a receiver shell. That's the reason I had avoided any discussion of replacing the receiver, though I was wavering on that point. Replacing the entire leadpipe was an option.
But what we did was easier and better. Doug pulled out a tapered reamer of just the right taper, that he had made himself, and he carefully reamed the receiver out to the proper taper for a modern tuba mouthpiece. It took only a bit to do the job, and didn't go through the thin wall of the mouthpipe inside the receiver shell. This approach avoided any violation of the structural integrity of the mouthpipe. It was such an obvious move that I wonder if it was a manufacturing step that was forgotten, and assumed that it was supposed to be that way by its owners (including me). This reaming opened the door to a different range of backbores, allowing us to address the high-range sharpness directly, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Then, he had me play, at first using the Conn Helleberg that I'd brought with me. This is the mouthpiece that works flawlessly on my F tuba, and I'm really familiar with its shape on my face. I liked its sound better than the Wick, but it had introduced unacceptable intonation difficulties.
We tried various things, but spent a lot of time with octave slurs from low Bb to middle Bb to high Bb. These slurs are my greatest enemy as a player, but this horn does them far better than any contrabass I've ever played before. Even so, Doug zeroed right in on a technique problem for me. He worked with me for about a half hour on how to position my mouth on the mouthpiece such that the shape of my teeth match the shape of the mouthpiece. In the end, I discovered an enlightening fact: I play better and more securely out the right side of my mouth than out the left. This is probably a fact of playing a left-facing horn, though we didn't go into the whys. But the results were inescapable: When I moved my embouchure such that the mouthpiece was right of center on my mouth by about a quarter inch, *everything* improved. He seemed to think this was pretty normal--that most players had a dominant side of their embouchure, and we experimented with several before the answer became obvious. When in the center--okay. When to the right--better. When to the left--unplayable (literally).
We also talked about consistent and subtle movements of my position (or, more accurately, my position tendency) throughout the range, and came up with a strategy for me to work on. This is not changing the embouchure in different ranges--it was finding a way to avoid making those changes by doing something more subtle. His objective in showing me this stuff was to help me eliminate a problem zone for me--right smack in the middle part of the range at around Bb on the staff. Though I hadn't noticed it, I had one setup for the low range, and several alternate setups for the high range, with the middle part being neither bird nor beast and causing a tremor in my embouchure. I feel like I have an approach for working on this problem in the coming years.
During this process, I settled on a rim that allow me this approach most comfortably--A 132 rim with a narrow, round shape and a sharpish inside edge; similar to a Helleberg, but without the flat face found on most Conn examples.
Then I spent considerable time playing two tunes. One was a simple English folk song that ranged from low C to Eb above the staff, and the other was the tuba solo in An American in Paris, which goes from that same low C to E on the staff. Using these as a baseline, Doug started making changes.
During all these changes, I resisted the temptation to ask him what he was pulling out of the cabinet, because I didn't want to prejudice myself by preconceived notions. So, I let him just trade this cup for that and this shank for that. After several changes, the intonation problems pretty well vanished. Then, he started experimenting with sound. We found a shank that opened the horn up so much that it literally startled me. I had to stop playing so I could giggle--the effect was profound. Yes, THIS was the sound I wanted from this horn.
Throughout the process, we were comparing to my trusty Helleberg. At first, his combination was good, but not as good a sound as the Helleberg (even though intonation was better). Then, they were about the same. Finally, the Helleberg started sounding bad in comparison.
But getting that best sound allowed the flat fifth partial to creep back in, and he chucked the shank up on two lathes to work on a shank to allow deeper seating and to slightly alter the backbore. That helped, but in the end, we left a bit of flat fifth partial there in favor of the best possible sound.
I was floored when let myself look closely to compare the resulting mouthpiece with my others. I like large mouthpieces, but this one is a veritable toilet bowl. It is much deeper than my PT-48 that I love on the Miraphone, and the throat is noticeably bigger. I ended up with a 132 narrow rim, a T cup, and a T-6 backbore with an approximately American shank. Amazingly, this mouthpiece did not ruin my upper register as had other large mouthpieces I'd tried.
My observations (Mine, not Doug's): Rim is a comfort issue, related to the shape of the teeth behind the lips more than anything, and that's why it affects articulation. Big cup = big sound. More volume lowers high-range pitch (as expected). Big throat and backbore = rounder, warmer sound. Proper receiver shape and mouthpiece depth = cleaner articulation and more manageable intonation.
I continue to be amazed by the willingness of the top experts in the tuba world to make themselves available even to lowly amateurs like me. I went in expecting to buy another mouthpiece, and I ended up with a needed horn repair, a partly custom mouthpiece, and a valuable, well-targeted lesson.
Rick "a grateful convert" Denney