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In the trombone realm practice mutes are basically all good (okura/ best brass/ ben van dijk). Not so for tuba’s!! Is it that hard to design a practice mute that is in tune and actually is silent? I have schlipf now, it is doable but the tuning really sucks apart from the midrange.

I would think a basic design with a very large volume (large bulb past the bell) in light weight printed material could work. Ideally would like to buy a CAD design that I can have printed locally. This basic CAD design could be adjusted for any bell size and bell throat diameter.

No? Yes?

Large format 3D printers (~325 mm³) are becoming more accessible now, before it was either high end professional ($$$) or entry level hobbyist machines.

To work out a good design you need someone with a large format printer that can iterate and fine-tune the design.

Scaling up a trombone design could be a good start

That is good to know the printing possibilities are there.

I am not so sure if a scale up of a trombone mute is going to work. On the other hand: one big difference I think I see is that the trombone mute follows the bell profile much closer than the schlipf on my tuba