So, last night I was at band practice. We were quickly running through some of the Christmas music for our first concert on the 13th. I was using the Yamaha 11 mouthpiece I mentioned in a previous post with my silver Olds Ambassador trumpet. Strangely, my lip got really tired way early in the practice, long before I expected it to. On a whim, I switched to my generic 3C mouthpiece, and quickly found new life and endurance. My tonal quality came back substantially also.
So it looks like the 3C is the size for me. I just need to find a mouthpiece with the comfort of the Yamaha rim, and a comparable 3C size. According to the Yamaha Mouthpiece Compatibility Chart for trumpet, a 14B4 mouthpiece is compatable to a Bach 3C. Hopefully the rim will have a similar profile to the 11 I mentioned.
The nice thing about trumpet mouthpieces is that there are hundreds of them on eBay, from cheap Chinese copies for $2.95 to 3 figure custom shank and rim combinations, water-filled mouthpieces, and so on. So I have a bid in on a nice used 14B4, and we’ll see if I get it or not.
The “great mouthpiece hunt” continues… l’ll stay in touch.