Posted by Tim C on November 21, 2002 at 14:16:24:
In Reply to: Which Mouthpiece Do You Use? posted by JA on November 21, 2002 at 07:53:45:
Hi,
The Dillon Sheridan S3 is the standard mouthpiece for that horn. As You know, this horn is a small Eb that has great high range and very acceptable, quite free blowing low range. The nature of this horn is more solo-oriented. So if you want to get a big,dark robust sound out of this tuba, according to Arnold Jacobs, you need a bigger/deeper (or both) mouthpiece, to bring out the fundamentals. My teacher at University of Arizona, Kelly Thomas, also uses a 983 Eb, when he play with quintet or something that require the sound of the tuba to be the bass voice instead of a solo voice, he uses the Dillon Sheridan O1 (after trying out quite a few others, he told me the O1 is "the one" for that kinda stuff) and the result is amazing. He just played Eugene Bozza's quintet piece with the faculty quintet for Octubafet and sounded great.
Yeah, you will probably lose a bit of high range on that big mouthpiece, maybe it's not as comfortable playing up there. If you don't plan to get a big tuba, get the Dillon S3 AND O1 so you have both high and low range covered. Now, I am not saying you can't sound good in low register with a S3 or a samll mouthpiece, just offering some thoughts. I hope this helps..
sincerely,
Tim Chen