The relevant point here being that the Besson E flats are not IMHO overly mpc sensitive with mpcs of modest sizes, verly large and deep mouthpieces could be another matter. I should have said that Bell said that the average BB flat mouthpiece was too small and the average E flat mpc was too large. Hope that doesn't confuse things too much!Īctually I made a mistake in the writing of what I remembered. I have been very lucky with my tuba purchases over the years & it took a while for me to get my head around buying a mouthpiece that cost around 1/3 the price I paid for the instrument! But it has proven a wise investment as it makes the tuba sound twice as good! It took a while for me to stop the habit of fighting for the pitch & just relax with it, but now I have a piece that lets me play in tune, with ease & with the broad sound I have in my head. I was complimented on the sound after the first rehearsal I used it in by two players from different sections of the band. When I heard Bloke was producing a mp specifically for these instruments I got my chance & have found MY mouthpiece now. I wanted to try a stainless steel mp but my EEb has the old smaller bore reciever. I started playing around with different sized pieces based on what I've read on this board & found I could get better articulation with a sharper rim, so switched to helleburg/bach 18 for a while & found I liked the breadth of sound & solidity of articulation these gave me but I had to work harder at the pitching. I used a 24AW for years with no problems whilst in the military & went back to that piece when I took up the tuba again after an 18 year lay off. I've been playing it for about 9 months now & have had nothing but praise for the sound it is helping me produce. I have to give a shout out to Bloke's "imperial" mouthpiece here. This is not an attack on your person, as all players not doing their basics on their new instrument when going from contrabass to bass tuba will suffer from the same problems. That is giving you a full sound, but until you adapt your air support and your body, neck, and head resonance cavities you will be flattish in the low & top registers and sharpish in your upper middle register. The problem is that you are playing that Eb tuba like you play your BBb tuba. However I now use blokepieces for my F and my BBb’s, so I use the Solo #2 on the 981 to keep rims uniform.Īll that said, you won’t like my take on your pitch problem: that it is neither with the tuba nor with whatever mouthpiece you might choose. When I got a Mike FInn 3H for my BBb basses, it turned out being too small for these, but being ideal for the 981. I found that neither DW3L nor DW1L exploited the potentials of this fine tuba, so for years I preferred the PT-50 for its sound and fought the problems with articulations in low dynamics. Many times I will even choose to bring a 5 to a gig or recording because I want to have those extra low notes available to me.I own and play a 981 made in 1999. 5’s have become very common and most pros own at least one and are comfortable playing them. The other option already mentioned is of course a 5 (or 6) string bass with a low B string. This is a little more cumbersome say in a live setting but doable if there is time for the transition or if a bassist brings an extra instrument for that purpose. Playing the low string tuned a step below isn’t much of a stretch for an experienced player and some guys who have the lever are completely comfortable with it.Īnother option is to tune the entire bass a half step down and transpose up a half step. If I’m playing 4 string and I need an Eb or a D for a song or two I drop my E string down to a D which can be done manually or by a special E string tuner with a lever that does it on the fly. As a bassist if I know someone wants that note or any note lower than an E I will do one of three things: There is a big difference in the sound of the lowest Eb on a 4 string bass and an Eb an octave lower so if that is the sound you want go after it.
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