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Looks pretty nice to me, mabey new stems and a polish up... again would go get it if i wasnt so far away

https://sacramento.craigslist.org/msg/d ... 49577.html

Ooh, that bell!

But yeah, 3 valves and 3 different finger buttons... Gonna need a little help!

The valve caps seem to sit mostly at the same hight so id assume you'd only would need new stems and mabey finger buttons to do the bare minimum. But boy the rest of the horn is good

I had a 4 front valve Conn Giant Eb and while it looked really cool it was also not really a usable instrument. Sharp 4th partial, flat 2nd and a really flat low D (play 234), low C was great, low Bb was iffy, low B was missing. Open false tone was A natural, 234 low G was ok. It didn't sound that great either, the (kinda lousy) 56J I played in the Army around the same time sounded better. The big King Eb I played was somehow worse, playing an Eb scale sounded like I was playing freeform jazz. imo out of all the big American Eb's the Yorks play the best and the Holtons sound the best (but your left hand will be busy!).

Bob Kolada wrote: ↑Fri Jul 21, 2023 2:40 pm I had a 4 front valve Conn Giant Eb and while it looked really cool it was also not really a usable instrument. Sharp 4th partial, flat 2nd and a really flat low D (play 234), low C was great, low Bb was iffy, low B was missing. Open false tone was A natural, 234 low G was ok. It didn't sound that great either, the (kinda lousy) 56J I played in the Army around the same time sounded better. The big King Eb I played was somehow worse, playing an Eb scale sounded like I was playing freeform jazz. imo out of all the big American Eb's the Yorks play the best and the Holtons sound the best (but your left hand will be busy!).

Yeah...That bell (being what it is) might best serve a frankentubist - replacing a missing recording bell (all the way down to the bottom bow) on some 4-valve 4/4 B-flat front-action Conn that seems to promise good/usable intonation...

...or if someone actually had a (genuine) Donatelli C with a trashed bell, perhaps that bell would serendipitously fit into the bottom bow...(??)

I have to admit that those Conn "Donatelli" C tubas capture my imagination, and I've played one or two Conn B-flats (of the same size) artfully shortened to C that played quite well...(preferred by me - candidly - to those good-playing Eastman C things).