| All good questions...and none which I can really answer. When I was your age, my chops weren't developed enough to use a shallow mouthpiece. My chops would collapse into the cup, completely cutting off air flow with a nasty fffffffwwwwp! sound.
I stumbled into the Schilke 14A4a that I used so long by accident. I purchased a pic trumpet and didn't have a mouthpiece for it, and I borrowed a 14A4a from friend to try out. He later gave me the mouthpiece, (he told me that I could keep it since it wasn't something he would ever use) and although I sold the pic, I kept the mouthpiece. Later, when I started gigging Latin band, I was busting my chops trying to use a #2 Marcinkiewicz - my one mouthpiece for everything - so I thought I would try the 14A4a on tunes where I wanted a bit of a boost for range. That didn't work too well, but I continued to do it until I found myself at a gig without the Marcinkiewicz in my case and I only had the Schilke. I struggled a bit for the gig, but by the end, I had found a way to make it work for me, and I never looked back.
That was my lead mouthpiece from 1997 until about 6 months ago when I decided to try the more open backbore of a 14A4. Other mouthpieces have not worked well for me, so I can't really give you any good advice about how to go about trying them other than to try not to go too small too fast.
__________________ Patrick Gleason
email me at: trickg1@hotmail.com
"What we do in life echoes in eternity"
"At my signal, unleash hell."
- Maximus Decimus Meridius |