New tuba day! Start of my F-tuba journey
Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2023 11:05 am
For a few years now (pretty much since finding 'the other forum' and this forum) I have had a thought in the back of my head to buy/try a bass tuba. I have always been playing 'big' BBb tuba's, such as compensating and non-compensating Besson's, while they do definitely have place laying down a nice foundation for a brass or wind band it is not always the most fun playing at home.
My searches on online market places kept 'drawing' me to a german style rotor F-Tuba . 2-3 weeks ago the 'bass tuba itch' was back again and I started looking and I found this one on the german "kleinanzeigen" site (in The Netherlands F tuba's are really rare, and if they are available it are expensive professional grade instruments) So, with my best Google Translate German I contacted the seller and he soon mentioned a Dutch friend that was coming over a week later and he could take the instrument with him to the Netherlands so that I could try it out and pick it up much closer to home, turns out that Dutch friend was someone I bought a mouthpiece from 2 weeks prior, small world! He is a really experienced tuba player and was able to test the instrument for me as I don't really have any experience with F-tuba's.
Now, enough talk! My new F-Tuba:
It is an Amati 451, modified with a 5th valve, minibal linkage and a MTS trigger, it is raw brass so I am going to add some leather covers soon
it plays soooo much lighter then my Besson 994, much more fun playing solo pieces at home
It is quite easy to play everything in tune, with a bit of trigger in the lower register.
Now I just need to learn the fingerings and train my ears. While I am learning I have some music written for horn in F, which is transposed and written in treble clef, so I can use the fingerings I am used to, but the goal is to learn F fingers and read bass clef C parts (like the rest of the tuba world)
My searches on online market places kept 'drawing' me to a german style rotor F-Tuba . 2-3 weeks ago the 'bass tuba itch' was back again and I started looking and I found this one on the german "kleinanzeigen" site (in The Netherlands F tuba's are really rare, and if they are available it are expensive professional grade instruments) So, with my best Google Translate German I contacted the seller and he soon mentioned a Dutch friend that was coming over a week later and he could take the instrument with him to the Netherlands so that I could try it out and pick it up much closer to home, turns out that Dutch friend was someone I bought a mouthpiece from 2 weeks prior, small world! He is a really experienced tuba player and was able to test the instrument for me as I don't really have any experience with F-tuba's.
Now, enough talk! My new F-Tuba:
It is an Amati 451, modified with a 5th valve, minibal linkage and a MTS trigger, it is raw brass so I am going to add some leather covers soon
it plays soooo much lighter then my Besson 994, much more fun playing solo pieces at home
It is quite easy to play everything in tune, with a bit of trigger in the lower register.Now I just need to learn the fingerings and train my ears. While I am learning I have some music written for horn in F, which is transposed and written in treble clef, so I can use the fingerings I am used to, but the goal is to learn F fingers and read bass clef C parts (like the rest of the tuba world)
