This site, the result of many years of work and many, many more years of research, is designed to let you design and then get your own mouthpiece. If you simply wish to explore how mouthpieces are made, you can do that too.

To start off, you should choose the mouthpiece which most-closely resembles the one you’re using now and then begin to modify it to get the improvements you’re after. Once you’ve made your changes a simple click and we will send your order to our manufacturers who will deliver them to you in a matter of a week or so.

If you wish to jump to the section on Navigating the Site, [click here][1]

All over the site, you will see the advice not to make big changes at one go as the mouthpiece is a precise and well-developed part of your instrument and tiny changes may have enormous effects.The huge benefit of the PeakTone approach to mouthpiece design is that you may change just one characteristic of your mouthpiece and that you do not have to accept the many changes between mouthpiece steps in off-the-shelf design. This gives you the enormous power over your playing.

Some of these changes will be designed to make the mouthpiece feel more comfortable to play, particularly those around the lip, the upper face. Small changes to the cup diameter may also help you fit the mouthpiece to your lips better.

Some of you will be looking for changes which modify your tone. It’s changes in the cup and backbore which will yield a different playing experience and these are detailed elsewhere on this site.

If you are having difficulty matching a mouthpiece’s stem or shank to an instrument, whether that is because of an ill-fitting match between mouthpiece and instrument or because of tuning difficulties, the relevant dimensions may be changed easily and, again, this site tells you how to do this. Lastly, should you wish to modify the external appearance of your mouthpiece, this may be achieved by selction of any one of the five decorations offered.

Wharever your aim is in using our site, we wish you good results and please do keep us informed of how you get on.

 

Navigating the Site

There’s just seven simple steps to getting your mouthpiece designed and printed and they’re illustrated below:

How the Steps Work

1. Choose your currency

By clicking on the arrow, as shown below, you will be able to see what your mouthpiece would cost to print in a variety of currencies (currently, £ (GBP), $, (US dollars), CAD (Canadian Dollars), € (Euros), ¥ (Japanese Yen). The price indicated is that which is applicable to the currently-selected printing material and when the material is changed, the price will be updated.

2. Pick Your Starting Point

At this stage you can pick a mouthpiece to start from. To the right of the choice name is a box describing each mouthpiece.

3 Pick your Decoration

Each mouthpiece can be created with your choice of five different decorations. The diagram below shows how these are chosen. When a decoration is clicked, a box opens to the right to provide a brief description of that decoration.

The characteristics of the various decorations are:

• Slimline – the simplest, no-frills outer shape which is the cheapest to print
• Minimal – the form which is most like a traditional trombone mouthpiece
• Traditional – the form most like a traditional trumpet mouthpiece
• Turbo – the bulky form which is said to provide a broader tone
• Cornu – the form which is most like a cornet or flugel horn mouthpiece

4 Adjust your mouthpiece

This the stage where you may look at the specification of the mouthpiece as it currently stands as well as adjusting the various parameters which define it.

When the EDIT item is clicked, a box opens up which offers the two different editing options: the simple one and the advanced one. The simple option provides facilities for you to edit the four most-commonly used parameters, Cup Diameter, Cup Depth, Rim Rise and Rim Width. The box which provides the facility to set these parameters is shown below.

In order to explore these further, you may use the following links:

to explore cup diameter, click here

to explore cup cepth, click here

to explore rim rise, click here

to explore rim width, click here

When the advanced button is clicked, a new entry box is displayed, this being shown below.

This box has six drop-down menus, each of which provides access to settings for the respective mouthpiece features, grouped as shown below:

The operation of these features is detailed on the About the Controls page, here