Posted by Leland on February 10, 2004 at 00:14:59:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: PT-86 or PT-89 vs PT-88? posted by Rick Denney on February 09, 2004 at 10:15:16:
Back when Canadian Brass started doing their new Getzen line, along with Warburton-produced mouthpieces, they said (at least in the marketing brochures) that after trying various distributions of mass on mouthpieces, they went with the style found in original Helleberg tuba mouthpieces, and applied that principle to the other voices as well.
Their reasoning was that each variation enhanced some harmonics and dampened others, and that while heavy versions were too "dead", they preferred the tone color produced by the Helleberg-esque versions.
I've heard of aluminum mouthpieces, designed for very little dampening of vibrations. Also, Terry Warburton once made a trumpet mouthpiece as a joke for a trumpet player who kept demanding, "More mass, I want a heavier mouthpiece!" The result was a fifteen-pound cylinder of silverplated brass with a shank on one end and a stepped surface on the other, finishing in a fully operational trumpet rim, cup, throat and backbore.
I think there's some difference just because of mass, but it's negligible. The last heavy mouthpiece I tried that had a standard equivalent -- the R&S "soup can" heavy Helleberg -- actually seemed to vibrate back against my lips more than a regular version. Any difference out front, though, amounted to as much as the difference between a good day and a bad day on the horn.
Plus, if I were B&S, I wouldn't change any interior dimensions and still call it an 88. Who knows what Bach does these days, though.