Really Long Post Warning: Here are some of the highlights of my New Tuba Days... most of these have gone to new homes now.
B&S PT-6. Loved that horn. This tuba belonged to Jon Voth. I drove to DC in late December and bought it, and then back to KY in a day (16hr r/t).
Cerveny Piggy. Late 70s model, belonged to John Cradler and John Stevens, who won their Marine Band audition and toured with it for the US run of
Barnum, respectively. This was one of the "wide octave" Pigs. Bottom C was flat, upper C was sharp. Still a really nice horn. The linkage was swapped out with Rudi Meinl paddles and the updated Cerveny ball-and-sockets.
Cerveny 601 Kaiser BBb. What a huge tuba.
Mirafone 184 CC. This tuba belonged to Bill Kearney, who was Roger Bobo's colleague at Eastman. Kearney went on to play this instrument professionally in the Buffalo Philharmonic. It was later swapped out to have three different modular leadpipes. It was a really cool horn that I regret selling. This vintage of 184, the intonation was pretty spotty with Alexander-like tendencies of middle G sagging flat. But it was cool with a neat history.
Here is Bill Kearney with the very same horn:
Alexander 163 CC: my first foray into Alexander land. I believe this tuba belonged to Dean Somerville, a retired military musician, who got the linkage changed out to miniballs and put on those clever paddle extenders. It also sported aftermarket lacquer. A really cool horn, but I was too broke to do the things that needed to be done to it, like adding a fifth valve and trimming some slides. It really got me hooked on the Alex sound.
Rudolf Meinl 3/4 CC: really cool horn. It did everything I wanted and had good intonation. But I also had a Miraphone 186, approximately the same size, so I chose that one which was more point and shoot.
Speaking of which, here was the Miraphone. It was a Tuba Exchange model without a lot of the fancier trim, but it still had a kranz. Nice player.
Around this time, I bought the Vienna-system (3+3) Alexander 156 F tuba from Sam Gnagey. This belonged to Sam Greene, who played it in Cincinnati. My favorite F tuba of all time, super sweet. I traded it for the Gnagey CC below when my playing needs changed.
I also experimented with a Besson 15" bell E-flat at this time. I bought one on eBay. It arrived with horrible peeling lacquer and was dog-ugly. I stripped it and scotchbrited it to a nice brushed finish. Now, almost nine years later, I had the chance to buy back the exact same tuba.
2016:
Today:
Here was my Kalison 2000, basically a large 5/4 or 6/4 size tuba. Really nice sound, really nice valves (Gronitz? Bauerfeind?). The intonation tendencies were sort of the opposite of what you'd expect from a tuba this size. It was a lot of tuba.
Miraphone 188 with "Presto" linkages. Great sound, point-and-shoot.
My Gnagey CC with Holton bell, which I sold to
@tubanh84 almost 8 years ago now. I think it still lives with him in Alaska.
I took several years off playing and got back into the mix with a Musica/VMI CC. Really, really tall tuba. Nice player. I think I had it shipped to me, and it survived. I played my last recital on this tuba and on a Meinl-Weston 46 F which I don't have any good pics of.
Then COVID hit and I sold all my tubas and bought a house. Fast forward two years, I decided to buy this nice Eastman 832. Super horn.
Got back into F tuba land with a cheap little Yamaha 621 clone that I bought directly from China using Western Union. Sketchy, but it worked out for under $2k.
Ended up working out a 1,000 mile r/t, three-tuba trade to snag this nice Piggy CC, one of my favorites:
Found a nice 1960s Conn 36K with the awesome floral paintjob (of course, I named it "Daisy"):
I saw this Alexander 163 for sale in a music shop in Washington state at a very low price due to the weird setup. Got it palletized and shipped cross-country and had it converted to normal thumb-operated setup for the 5th valve. One of the best Alexes I've ever played.
Essentially managed to sell my Eastman to fund the purchase of one of my dream F tubas, an Alexander 157. It's a little newer vintage with a slightly larger bell (ca. 1980s). All gold brass. I installed a quint-length slide on the fifth valve to get a nice in-tune low Bb.
And the two Alexanders next to each other:
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So, today, the stable consists of the Alex 163 CC, the Piggy, the Alex F, and a Besson 15" bell compensating Eb (I actually have two, and will be selling one soon, still percolating on that prospect). For outdoor gigs, I have the Daisyphone and a King 2341 BBb with a recording bell, which is pretty fun to play. Oh yeah, and an old Besson New Standard euph for when I am occasionally asked to play euph, and a few trombones, helicons, turn-of-the-century E-flats, and lots of other weird stuff.
