I did some investigation about this. The point is not the amount the mouthpiece fits onto the neck, as this is a function of the length of the mouthpiece shank. Rather, the important dimension is the distance from some reference point on the horn to the tip of the mouthpiece. I just measured the distance from the edge of the cork to the tip of the mouthpiece. What I found is that the (fairly small chamber) Vandoren mouthpiece was 10-15 mm greater distance from the reference point to the tip of the mouthpiece, when in tune, than a Meyer mouthpiece. Note again the length of the MP shank is not involved in this measurement. An old very large chamber mouthpiece had an even smaller distance from the reference point to the tip when tuned to the same pitch. What this tells me is the Conn horn and neck combination were designed for mouthpieces with larger chambers than many current MPs, and that pulling out a MP with too small a chamber and adding material to the MP or neck just addresses the symptom - the MP is not matched to the horn. Finally, when using a MP with larger chamber and thus shorter distance to the tip, altissimo response and tuning over all registers is dramatically improved, as are the "wonky" notes found here and there on the horn. Y You have to match the horn with the MP. It has nothing to do with the length of the MP and everything to do with the internal design of the MP.

Hello, I talked with Emilio Lyons about this yesterday. He told me that a bunch of players he knew and knows used to put the mouthpiece on far enough to seat well on the neck and then compensate by pulling out the neck from the receiver a little bit. I have a '35 conn bari that this works well on. He told me that it is because the mouthpieces used to be longer. He also knew a couple of guys who got a piece of graduated copper tube soldered onto the end of the neck (cork side obviously) to increase the lenght by a 1/4 to 1/3 inch. I have only noticed this problem on my conns and have never heard about it on other baritones. I use a metal florida link that is on the horn about 3/4 of an inch, it seals but I have replaced the cork several times to make sure of this.