Lets say we’ve tried out a traditional beginner’s trumpet mouthpiece, a Size 7 one. In Peaktone-speak, we call that a Size S-S and we wish to modify it according to the following scenario:

1. I find the cup diameter of the PeakTone S-S a bit small as I have rather thick lips. Therefore, I wish to increase the cup diameter.
2. I find it a bit hard to play the higher notes using this mouthpiece so I will decrease the depth of the cup.
3. I find that I get tired when playing for a long time on this mouthpiece so I will increase the width of the rim.
4. I find the radius on the rim a bit sharp so I will reduce this.
5. I would like a simpler outside shape on the mouthpiece so I will change the decoration.

This means we want to change five things or, in the terms used on this site, the  five parameters: cup diameter, cup depth, rim width, rim rise and mouthpiece decoration. The iluustration below show what we aim to do graphically. Probably the most-difficult of these parameters to visualise is the rim rise so the middle view at the bottom of the diagram below shows how this works. It is a measure of how much the peak of the rim rises above what would be a flat rim surface.

The next task is to work out how much I wish to raise or lower or increase or decrease the various parameters. I will work either in millimetres (mm) or thous, the latter being thousandths of an inch. The changes we need to make are really very small as we’re working on trumpet mouthpieces. These and those of the cornet are pretty-much the smallest mouthpieces we’re looking at and the changes on larger mouthpieces can be somewhat larger. The other, even smaller, mouthpieces are those of the cornet(to) but these will be treated later on in the development of this site.

1. Converting the Changes into Numbers

The rim of your mouthpiece is the bit you feel on your lips and the cup diameter defines how far across your lips it spreads. It is the cup diameter, therefore which is most affected by the shape of your lips when it comes to choosing a suitable mouthpiece. A beginner on an instrument, in this case the trumpet, might not be aware of relatively large changes in cup diameter, say around 0.4 mm (16 thou) but an experienced player will pick up changes of a little over 0.15 mm (6 thou). When it comes to the playing characteristics of a mouthpiece/instrument/player combination, that’s another matter and small changes can make a huge difference.

Here’s the scenario for the changes we’re about to make:

I find the cup diameter a bit small so I will increase this.

I find it a bit hard to play the higher notes using this mouthpiece so I will decrease the depth of the cup.

I find that I get tired when playing for a long time on this mouthpiece so I will increase the width of the rim.

I find the radius on the rim a bit sharp so I will reduce this.

I would like a simpler outside shape on the mouthpiece so I will change the decoration.

In order to show the changes we want to make clear, I have put them in the table below, here they’re changed into numbers, in this case millimetres.

Many of the changes shown in the table above are so small as to be scarcely noticeable when you make them onscreen. That’s not to say that they’re not very noticeable when you blow the the finished mouthpiece.To make the changes shown above, we can use the Simple or default settings, that’s the ones shown in the diagram below.

When the page is first displayed, the setting sliders can be seen and these provide one way of making the necessary changes. Just to experiment drag the cup diameter slider back and forth a bit and you will see the number in the white edit box below this slider changing. You should also be able to see the diameter of the mouthpiece cup changing, although this will not be a huge change. The range of mouthpiece diameter settings here ranges over two millimetres and this makes a huge different in the feel of the mouthpieces. If you want a bigger cup diameter than these settings provide, you would move up from an S-S (Symphonic – Small) to the next larger size, S-SM (Symphonic – Small, Medium) using the mouthpiece selection section above.

Once you have dragged the slider away from the default setting, a reset button will appear to the right of the setting edit box and clicking this will return the cup diameter setting to its default value of 16.6 mm. You can also get some information about what the cup diameter means in terms of mouthpiece design by clicking the i button on the upper left of the control panel. The diagram below shows the message given when the cup diameter information button is clicked.

Changing Mouthpiece Parameters

We can now go ahead and change the mouthpiece parameters. Firstly the cup diameter; the table above shows that we wish to change this from 16.6 to 17.2. You can do this by dragging the slider but that needs a steady hand and a good pointing device. It’s much easier simply to type in the number 17.2 into the cup diameter edit box. You can then do the same for the cup depth, setting this to 22.0 (you can simply set it to 22), then the rim rise to 0.4 and the rim width to 5.8. The picture of your creation, in the middle of the screen will be updated each time you leave an edit box.

The small diagram below allows you to experiment with the sliders for cup depth and cup diameter and with the reset button to the right of the edit box which allows a numerical value to be added.

<div class="odoko-diagram-sliders">
  <div id="sliders-simple-cup_diameter-cup_depth-cup" data-params="cup_diameter,cup_depth">
  </div>
</div>

The last stage is to chose your decoration from the five on offer, these being listed in the box shown below. The default decoration for trumpets is traditional but you may choose any one you like.