rowuk

Mr. Crow,
I really appreciate the "basic" philosophy questions and your quest for freedom of BS.
My "opinion" on custom mouthpieces is that you pick a shop that does the thinking for you. You feed them basic info and expect them to use their vast experience to minimize the guesswork. It is kind of like picking a doctor, a pastor, a trumpet teacher or physical therapist. In each of those cases, we admit that our knowledge and capability to figure everything out ourselves is grossly limited and search for a complementary relationship.
Although some may think that having a collection of Monette, Stork, GR, Kanstul mouthpieces is cool and implies that we have done our homework, each of these companies have varying concepts about what works and this shows me that the player has either bad instruments that need particular mouthpieces to compensate for the "problems" OR they don't realize how much they are confusing their faces!
I think the most sensible thing to do is IF you feel that a "standard" mouthpiece is not adequate, you pick one company and develop a relationship - letting the experts do what they do best. If an instrument is very "unique" - take it there and let them match it up!
I made my choice in 1997 and every time that I "think" that I need something else, I send an E'mail with the symptoms and wait for a response (which generally comes very quickly). Only once has that lead to another mouthpiece!
My trumpets in deep F/Bb/C/D/Eb, cornet and flugelhorn mouthpieces all have the same rim. For lead and for the picc in G and A/Bb I use a smaller rim. This works for me and I can switch at will during a concert!

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Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.