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I’m trying to find the model number of a mirafone/miraphone I played in school. It was a “student” model, BBb 4-piston valve top action horn. I think it was 3/4 size as it was smaller than the 186s we had. I was a trumpet player and switched to tuba 2 years into playing when I entered 8th grade and this was bought by my school for me. I preferred it to the 186s when I moved up to the high school as a freshman and brought it with me and played through
My high school career. I’m certain is was BBb, I’m certain it was 4-valve and a mirafone. It had a thumb ring next to the valves. I have hopes of finding one but I’ve been searching for two years and cannot event identify what it was.

Any help appreciated

I believe the three-valve model was called a 1270, and I don't know if the four valve model had a different number, unless maybe it was 1271 or something. The bore size was something like 17mm. I believe I robbed some long pairs of tubing off of a destroyed one to extend the length of the 5th valve tubes on my B&S Symphonie model F tuba.
They also engraved word "STANDARD" next to the word "MIRAFONE".

When I was in the 12th grade, the band director wanted me to play a theme-and-variations solo with the band, and I found that one to be fairly nimble, due to the small bore. It had been issued to our school (new) that year. LOL... talk about a really-REALLY poor man's F tuba.

They were delicately built, and I turned that instrument back into the school looking perfect and new, but - likely due to the changes in parenting, laws, societal attitudes, levels of drug abuse, and all sorts of other things - over the past half century, most of them that I encounter these days are just about completely destroyed.

I believe that later it became a front-action model with a larger bore, possibly a wider bell diameter, and much higher price. The original top-action 1270 competed with the Meinl-Weston models 10 and (4-valve) 11 from the same era - which were also delicate. People bought the Mirafone version due to its name recognition, and people bought the Meinl-Weston version due to the fact that it was convertible for marching. M-W may (??) have come out with the very first convertible tuba. They tended to be gimmick-oriented during that era, with another one being slides on the William Bell model C tuba that would switch around different ways, supposedly to convert it back and forth from C to B flat.

There was a post here about a 1271 top-action: viewtopic.php?t=7190

There's a newer one at BBC: https://www.baltimorebrasscompany.com/p ... -tuba.aspx

Both 3v and 4v were also called "Perinet" tubas. I had a 3v and it was OK. I sold it to a kid who graduated from HS and had to turn the school tuba in. He plays for fun and, at least for now, the Perinet does fine.