Thoughts on the E. Schmid Mouthpiece
Tuesday, January 24, 2023 by Billy Roberts | French horn
Update 9-18-2023: I did eventually go back up to a 17.5 mm mouthpiece and now use a digital Schmid 8.5. The problem wasn't the inner diameter, it was just that the Laskey rim really wasn't for me. However, I still feel like the sound of the Laskey is hard to beat for those who can use it.
Until last fall, I preferred to use a Laskey G-series mouthpiece for most French horn playing. For most of the years that I played a Conn 8D, the Laskey 75G seemed to work well for me. However, after settling on a Geyer-style horn, and after discovering that I do better with a mouthpiece that has a 17.0 mm inner diameter instead of 17.5 mm, I switched to a 70G and found it difficult to get a sound with the Laskey mouthpiece that was neither too bright nor too thin. After successively using a Holton-Farkas medium cup mouthpiece, a Laskey 70F, a Stork CM15, and a Yamaha 29C4, I had a pretty good idea of which mouthpiece characteristics seemed to work well for me. After doing a lot of research and looking at a lot of mouthpiece diagrams, I concluded that the Engelbert Schmid mouthpiece was likely to be one that had all of my favorite characteristics in one mouthpiece.
In November, I took the plunge and ordered an Engelbert Schmid French horn mouthpiece through Houghton Horns. The price was very reasonable. I think my reluctance to try one sooner was the fact that this was a special order item, shipping times might be lengthy, and I wanted to get it right with my first try of this model. I was not disappointed. From the moment I picked it up and buzzed it the first time, I was struck by how comfortable the rim was and how easily I could produce a focused tone with just the right balance of breathiness by just buzzing the mouthpiece without the horn. Engelbert Schmid mouthpiece sizing is very simple. All you need to know is what inner diameter fits your lips and what cup size you would like. I went with a medium cup, and it seems to work well in all registers of the horn. It’s neither too bright nor too dark for me.
I received my mouthpiece two weeks ago, and from the start I’ve been amazed at how well the Englebert Schmid mouthpiece really does all things. Hard attacks, soft attacks, slurs, tonguing, loud playing, soft playing, and everything in between come through easily with this mouthpiece. I find that the Schmid mouthpiece really brings out the best of my horn. When I was playing with a Laskey G series, I kept thinking, “This is ok, but I have a Laskey G-cup sound. I wish I could tone it down when I want to.” With the Laskey F series, I thought, “This is a nice sound, but all I can get is this Farkas sound. I wish I could get a little more ring to it.” When I was playing with the Stork, I thought, “This is a nice, velvety tone that I’m making, but I wish I could play around with it more.” The Schmid mouthpiece seems to have a way of holding back its presence so that my breath and embouchure have more control over the sound than the mouthpiece does.
For the first couple of days that I used the Schmid mouthpiece, there was a fuzziness to the sound whenever I would hit a pitch off-center, but this went away quickly as I relearned how to find the center of pitch for each note. I can confidently say now that tuning is great and that there is a clarity and ring to the tone that I just wasn’t getting as easily with the other mouthpieces I had tried. Basically, the Schmid mouthpiece provides everything that I had hoped for with the Laskey G-series, but with more versatility. I was also amazed at how quick the adjustment period was. I am currently working with a professional horn player about once a month just to take stock of my own playing technique and make sure that I don’t fall back into any old ruts that might derail my horn playing. I had a lesson with him the day after I got this mouthpiece. I didn’t tell him that I was using a different mouthpiece, but everything we worked on felt much better than it had in any of our previous lessons. The exception was tuning, but I just needed a few days to understand how this mouthpiece interacts with my horn. This is no longer an issue.
In short, the Engelbert Schmid French horn mouthpiece is extremely comfortable for me to play on and allows for a wide range of playing techniques. My Schmid 5 mouthpiece has a way of bringing out the best of the horn instead of adding its own traits to the sound. If I were doing a lot of low horn orchestral playing, going a half size or even a full size deeper might be better, but the mouthpiece I chose plays well in all registers. When purchasing it, I had thought that it might be best for solo or chamber work, but its flexibility makes me think that this will truly become an all-purpose mouthpiece for me.
