my 60+ years old (fairly rare) 3+1 recording comp E-flat
Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2022 7:54 am
I’ve spoken often about it. I’m extremely lucky to have it. It offers amazing easy facility, good intonation, is fully chromatic, and is probably the perfect thing for playing early jazz in small combos. Further, I’ve made a couple of different sized upright bells for it, which I use occasionally.
I’m not much on instrument provenance, but more on playability and condition. That having been said, I guess it’s pretty neat to know who originally purchased an instrument, particularly when I’m only the second owner. I knew that it had belonged to a band, but yesterday the intermediary - Kent’s Dad - gave me the specifics:
Another smart person pointed out to me that the way that they managed to put recording bells on these instruments was to use the obsolete high pitch upper bows, which took away enough length to add enough length for a recording bell. When I install my upright bells on this tuba, it’s much taller in stature than the standard models.
The recording bell really doesn’t differ very much at all from the B-flat version’s recording bell (same collar, etc.), other than the fact that the diameter of the flare is two inches smaller for the E-flat.
I’m not much on instrument provenance, but more on playability and condition. That having been said, I guess it’s pretty neat to know who originally purchased an instrument, particularly when I’m only the second owner. I knew that it had belonged to a band, but yesterday the intermediary - Kent’s Dad - gave me the specifics:
- 4C0690DE-766F-4606-8D19-F72B04F8FF94.jpeg (105.15 KiB) Viewed 141 times
Another smart person pointed out to me that the way that they managed to put recording bells on these instruments was to use the obsolete high pitch upper bows, which took away enough length to add enough length for a recording bell. When I install my upright bells on this tuba, it’s much taller in stature than the standard models.
The recording bell really doesn’t differ very much at all from the B-flat version’s recording bell (same collar, etc.), other than the fact that the diameter of the flare is two inches smaller for the E-flat.
