Melton Spezial Cc (Meinl Weston 37 "Bill Bell") Modifications?

[sidenius]

I've been the happy owner of a Melton Spezial (Meinl Weston 37 "Bill Bell") Cc tuba with 5 valves for a good year now.
I was wondering which modificatinos other owners of that model with the left hand operated 5th valve have had made?

I read somewhere that having the 5th valve operation moved from left hand to the traditionel right hand thumb operation has been done by a few players. That makes a lot of sense since the left hand operation locks the left hand in a position from where slide pulling is a long reach.
I think I will have that mod made.

But the other thing I'm considering is having some tubing cut off on the additional tubing loop with the interchangeable 5th valve slide.
The construction does'nt really make any sense to me at all! Why this extra tubing?

I'm using the longest of the two slides and has it pulled almost all the way out to have the in tune low F (54), low Eb (5124), low D (5234) and low Db (51234)
It also gives me the alternate fingering possibilities for a rather flat A (5 instead of 12) and G# (52 instead of 23) in the staff
If I add (loop in) the additional tubing by using the extra shorter slide in combination with the long tuning slide the 5th valve gives me 3 half steps lowered tuning (I did'nt check with the tuner to see how perfect the 3 half steps lower are in tune).

So - instead og having the long tuning slide pulled that far out it would make sense to just add the additional free tubing and cutting to the perfect in tune low register with the valve combinations that is so hardwired now.

Hope this makes sense at least to players with knowledge of this particular horn

Bertil

[bloke]

An alternate approach would be to install a RIGHT Hand thumb trigger for the #1 slide.

This is easier than re-configuring the 5th valve linkage.

[sidenius]

Thanks Bloke
That's a good idea!
It actually crossed my mind but I was anxious about the good deal of thumb moving in combination with the fingering.
After giving it a second thought I think it would be no problem with a spring loaded trigger returning to "home" every time not activated