Gold vs. Silver, does it make a difference?

[WilliamLang]

Hi all!

I currently have a silver plated and gold plated Griego GP6 in my possession, and wanted to give them a side by side comparison, so I made a video on it. I also tried out a stainless steel Giddings & Webster Don Harwood model, and a Momo 59DW* from an exciting new mouthpiece maker in Japan.

Bass trombone is my double, so forgive any missed notes! I wanted to really test the limitations on these pieces, and decided on using a solid first round list of Respighi's Fountains of Rome, Haydn's Creation, Schumann 3, and Hary Janos.

Check timings on the description or comments if you want to avoid listening all the way the through!

[bassbone1993]

Where do you find these MOMO mouthpieces? I've searched and can't find anything.

[WilliamLang]

I've gotten them secondhand from reverb and a friend in Florida, but they do have a website and show up on Google if you search Momo Trombone Mouthpieces

https://www.brasslab.jp/en/shop-1

[bassbone1993]

Thanks! I remember finding a website late in 2024, but the website was super spammy. Looks like it's been fixed!

[ghmerrill]

For years I used both silver and gold Schilke 66 mouthpieces on my tubas. Among the gold were the superbly factory-plated piece and another silver piece that I had gold-plated independently at some point. The only difference I ever discerned was that the gold was more "slippery" on the lips. This may or may not be an advantage to any particular player. I ultimately decided that I preferred the silver, but only because of the difference in feel. Beyond that, I really prefer Lexan. So you can see what direction I go on this sort of thing.

[GabrielRice]

Even with CNC-produced mouthpieces you can't count on everything being equal, and dimensions are always going to make a bigger difference than plating. I'll bet if you do even a crude measurement of the throats and backbores of your GP6 mouthpieces you will find at least one difference you can see without getting a calipers involved.

That said, I find a subtle difference between gold and silver plating with all else being as equal as I can get it - like changing just the rim of a Doug Elliott piece. Though I also find subtle differences between different silver or gold plated rims of the same labeled spec. Silver tends to have more core for me. Of course, "core" means different things to different people, so I'll say it this way: silver tends to sound more solid, like the center of the sound is fatter and more secure. Gold tends to sound more slippery to me as well as feel more slippery.

To make it even more complicated, I've found that even Doug Elliott's parts - which are about the most consistent I've found - change as I play them. I have 3 "identical" combinations of XB114/M/M8 2021*3. Doug even made the 3 shanks back-to-back and sent them to me so that they would be as identical as possible. When I got them I honestly couldn't tell the difference between them, so I picked one, put it in the case with my primary instrument, put the other two in cases with other horns I play only occasionally, and went about my life.

Fast forward over a year, I compared them again and found that the one I play every day feels and sounds different from the other two. Colleagues with good, professional ears confirmed that it sounds noticeably louder and more present.

I've given up on the idea of identical mouthpieces.

[GabrielRice]

And then there's this:

https://www.laskey.com/pages/scott-lask ... CbaCvEi2Jh

[WilliamLang]

I always wonder if we somehow change the mouthpiece and instrument by playing it - like breaking it in, or the constant vibration of playing itself creates sub-atomic (or larger) grooves that help reinforce how we play.

Probably no real way to know, but I like the romanticism of the idea, and I feel like there's got to be some sort of magic to art to supplement raw technique and science.

Great article from Scott also! I know when I do these mouthpiece videos it's not to discover any absolute truths, but to share the process of how something works for me and just add some interesting data for anyone that is curious.

[harrisonreed]

You do change the mouthpiece and instrument by playing it, especially if the calcium deposits you make are never cleaned out. But that's over the span of years.

[Lawrie]

I always wonder if we somehow change the mouthpiece and instrument by playing it - like breaking it in, or the constant vibration of playing itself creates sub-atomic (or larger) grooves that help reinforce how we play.
<snip>

I do a bit of amateur machining (actually, I'm really a bit of a hack, but I have fun) and one thing I do know is that metals, as supplied, usually contain internal stresses that are partially released by the machining process. E.G. I might take some material away from one side of a piece of flat bar and when released from the fixture (vise, clamp, whatever) the piece of bar will almost certainly bend slightly and no longer be flat. There are techniques* to minimise this but it will still happen.

While I mostly see it in steel, brass certainly has internal stress too. I haven't particularly noticed much change in the brass pieces I machine, but they are usually comparatively small and the change may not be sufficiently noticeable to the eye, or my calipers (I seldom need to machine with sufficient precision to worry about using a micrometer).

* One of these techniques is "normalising" via heat treatment. Machining equal amounts of material from opposite sides of the bar helps too. Also, time can see these stresses relieve. Who's to say that the vibrations from playing can't help relieve stress in the brass, especially when combined with a lengthy period of time.

It might be worth noting that brass work hardens. Was the brass stock annealed before machining? How much difference would this make? Annealing would certainly help relieve the stresses, as well as softening the brass. If annealed, machining the brass will work harden it again but with different stress vectors. I'm not sure if annealing the brass would make the machining process more troublesome as the annealed brass would be more prone to deformation. Really sharp tooling would help minimise this.

However, given the somewhat diminutive size of a brass mouthpiece compared to other stuff "in the real world" and the fact that the original bar stock is round and the machining is done radially to the stock's axis, I'm not sure the changes would be noticeable, or even measurable, but that's just my opinion.

I'd love to see Doug Elliot's take on this.

[snowtraveler]

I've always preferred gold-plate, and had one done for me some years ago.

Like, IDK, 40 years ago?

Gold seems to lend different feel...warmer and more slippery somehow.

(Apart from conductivity, I have no idea why.)