TubaForum.net

Rick Denney wrote: Sat Mar 14, 2026 7:40 am

bloke wrote: Sat Mar 14, 2026 7:14 am @Rick Denney

As far as old school machining is concerned, there's a little set of steel contours that machinists used to purchase and keep for reference.

It's interesting how the different contours of tuba mouthpiece rims line up with that little set of contours.

I can't remember what they're called. I need to go down the street to my machinist friend and ask him to pull them out and tell me what they're called.

They’re called radius gauges. I have an old Lufkin set.

Rick “old Lufkin precision stuff was as good as Starrett back in the day” Denney

1 Ton Tommy wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2026 4:34 pm Playing outdoors in the wind the day before I can't do much about; I didn't book the gig.

tubanh84 wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2026 5:11 pm

dsfinley wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2026 4:50 pm I agree with this. I think the PT-50 and PT-50+ are equally as hard to play on.

I don't know if it was my two specific mouthpieces or what. I'd never had much of a preference for megatone or + or whatever people were calling them mouthpieces, EXCEPT my 50 and 50+.

Background - this was all on my PT6 (rotary)
The 50 was wild. If I needed bright, raw, noisy, loud, you name it, I went with the 50. That thing had no limit.
The 50+ was a LOT more refined. I could control it much easier. It didn't have the same top end as the 50, but it was a much more flexible mouthpiece.

I made the 50+ my everyday mouthpiece and really only plugged the 50 in to amuse myself and remind me why I liked the 50+.

I also couldn't play EITHER mouthpiece unless I was really in shape. If I took a few weeks or months off, I'd play my Helleberg for the first week back and then switch to the PTs.

Then I found the Mike Finn H and really haven't looked back.

Robert Tucci Heavy-Shell mouthpieces offer substantial stability in high-volume performance environments. The shell weights, throat and backbores are calibrated to assist the player in controlling tonal output. Greater strength in tone production results in more efficiency and therefore superior results with less effort.

bloke wrote: Thu Mar 12, 2026 8:33 pm Don't all of those series feature huge throats, which would mean that you were putting as much air in there as those huge throats require - thus the air column was vibrating more than normal and causing that loose whatever to vibrate.

anadmai wrote: Wed Mar 18, 2026 8:34 am Reading through this post... is there ANYTHING about Vitamin E, or did someone's AI just spit out random nonsense?

Jim Williams wrote: Wed Mar 18, 2026 2:15 pm Rick Denney Wrote:
"But there is no carrier frequency or heterodyne reception in a tuba. The lips produce frequencies in the range of maybe up to 20 KHz, most of which is attenuated out because the tuba only resonates harmonic frequencies with any."

if there is no carrier, then how do we define the stream of air exiting the mouth and flowing into the tuba? The tuba could act like my cobweb or fan dipole antenna.
My non-physicist, non-engineer, enough to pass the Extra Class FCC test mind could see the input as amplitude modulated with respect to volume.
Each circuit in the tuba acts like a resonant antenna at some frequencies or others. Like my antennas, the input goes to the best-matched elements of the antenna (tuba) so on a C tuba there would be matches for the B flat harmonic series in the first valve circuit, some of which are better than others.

Jim "I've permanently blotted everything about the other forum out of my memory, but I've heard other brass-playing people with advanced EE degrees make an analogy between brass instruments and transmitters/antennas, and when I finger E flat and try to play F#, it doesn't sound resonant." Williams

Rick Denney wrote: Sat Mar 14, 2026 7:57 am Just for fun:

Here’s the frequency spectrum of me playing a Bb2 on the Miraphone 186 using my preferred OG Ultimate:

IMG_1934-dsqz.jpeg

Same note with a Mike Finn 4, which is a (good) heavyweight shallow F-tuba mouthpiece.

IMG_1935-dsqz.jpeg

The shallower mouthpiece adds more harmonic content, and it sounds different. But I see no evidence whatsoever of the mouthpiece ringing at 5.9 KHz, versus the more attenuated and lower ringing frequency of the OG Ultimate.

Rick “not carefully collected data, but at least I played the Bb in tune” Denney