"If they would put a 16 inch bell on this 14-in bell 3/4 tuba..."

[bloke]

Tubas that have been factory altered in this way, repair shop altered in this way, or owner altered in this way always seem to me to offer a sort of a bland/muted type of resonance.

The Olds/Reynolds tubas from the'70s and the Conn 5J are basically this sort of instrument, to my ears. I don't mind selling them, because they do "play", but the type of sonority they offer is just not my type of sound.

A tuba that actually does what I think some people are looking for is a true York/Holton size and shape (quite compact) bugle and bell with the 13/16 inch bore valveset.

The closest thing to this is a new-style King, but the body (and bell) is/are a little bit too large to achieve the amount of zing that I personally seek (which I achieve with the York/Holton 4/4 body and bell).

No one produces anything like this. In the past, Getzen came pretty close with their Canadian Brass thing (with a disguised King valve block), but it was in C, and shortening the bugle by two feet sacrifices some of that zing to which I refer. Holton's last gasp attempt at something like this was one last reintroduction of this bugle and bell with the .665" bore that they had used for the better part of a century (considerably smaller than .687"), but both the B-flat and C versions of this model missed the mark. Comparing the B-flat version of that too what I have assembled here.. there's just no comparison.

There are a few people who have built themselves things like this, and the more skilled they are at putting things together, the better these things have turned out. Again, cutting them to C takes away some of the resonance, so those who've done that have sort of worked against themselves even if they did a good build. "Yorkboy" is one who has put a few of these together (B-flat), and inspired me to do the same. I'm so grateful that I spent the time to put an instrument together like this, and have there is a remarkably high percentage of gig uses for this instrument. One example was a Valentine pops last night where I was sort of playing a fifth trombone book (if you can believe that) in a sort of Nelson Riddle type of orchestration. The cimbasso would have been a little much, and using the 6/4 B-flat (in the first of two rehearsals) didn't offer enough punch. The compact 4/4 B-flat instrument (the style of which I've been discussing above) was just the thing. Circling back to the beginning, if I had tried to use something like an Olds O-99 or Conn 5J, the (covered/almost muted) type of sound those offer just wouldn't have made it out into the hall.
I think there's a market for the type of instrument I've been describing in this post, and whether or not those who would really enjoy owning something like this even yet know it, but missing the mark (like Holton did a couple of decades ago or cutting to C - like Getzen did) would not really achieve it.

Finally, the proof is in the playing. Approximately 0% of people reading this post (and probably about the same percentage of all tuba players) have actually played an instrument as I've described above, so almost no one is going to give this post a thumbs up unless and until they play a tuba like the one I describe and - if they are devoted C players (as I was for 48 years) - they're going to have to stretch out their head a little bit in order to even be able to consider something like this viable.

[York-aholic]

The complete horn (at top) is a York 33 BBb bugle with King small stuff. Played and sounded great. Eventually traded it to a guy to replace the quintet horn he’d used for 20 years. He owns several high dollar horns but that Yorking is his fav.

The empty bugle at bottom is the same Holton bugle @bloke started with (at least I’m fairly sure).

Wow, definitely some camera lens distortion going on here.

IMG_0191.jpeg (31.89 KiB) Viewed 530 times

[bloke]

The way that I try to minimize and proportion-distortion is to stand (squat) back and zoom in, but I do lose a good bit of detail. It's a trade-off, unless I go and get my really expensive camera that's not a phone but just to really expensive camera (and I'm not going to spend a thousand bucks on a phone just to get a better camera) and I really don't want to have to go to the trouble to hook up wires and upload stuff from my camera only to my laptop, so...
Hey, @York-aholic
That's a nice instrument.

[York-aholic]

Yep, I generally use the stand back and zoom in method too. But with both tubas on the floor, I’m only so tall and wasn’t going to bother going to get a ladder.



Thanks Bloke. It was a 1240 valveset that I hung an extra 2nd valve casing off the back.