Bb/F Double Tuba

[BramJ]

Spotted this for sale on the german ebay:

https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anz ... 83-74-8864

[bloke]

I’ve always enjoyed looking at pictures of those, and I would classify those as “the sort of thing that I would love to pick up and fool around with at someone’s tuba shindig booth“, but I couldn’t imagine finding one to be practical for regular use, and I also couldn’t imagine that the rotors would turn quickly enough to play much of anything that requires any sort of velocity, though I may be wrong about that.

[jtm]

So much tubing! Must be a terrible chore to work on.

From the pictures, they’ve solved the rotor mass problem by making them out of cork. Or maybe pumice.

[the elephant]

The rotors are hollow and probably quite thin, though much thicker than piston walls. The knuckles look to be about 2 mm thick. Also, based on this single photo, the path seems to be straight, so they ought to have a lot of that *resistance* some of you guys crave.

Making them hollow reduces rotational weight, but does nothing to reduce the amount of surface contact area, so these still probably are pretty slow valves. At least they are not also solid. Valves like that would be real pigs in technical passages.

I do like that the F side is much smaller than the BBb side. Someone was thinking when this was made, at least. I have worked on a double f/BBb horn once, and both sides were about 18 mm, so the BBb side was pretty blatty. The F side was fine, though. The horn was quite heavy; the valves were quite slow.

[LargeTuba]

@Kontrabasstuba please buy this and tell us how it is!

[bloke]

It appears as though (yes?) someone cleaned the rotors in a mild acid solution (with the red indicating an older solution, and a good deal of copper suspended in it - which doesn't hurt a thing). It's good to see that no one 'buffasheeit" out of those rotors.

[Kontrabasstuba]

@Kontrabasstuba please buy this and tell us how it is!

Haha... i know the seller and i was tempted to buy it. But it's to much. Mostly is one part of the double tuba ok.
The tune is difficult on those double tubas.
Fantastic photos. Would love to give her a try...