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I have a 5 valve CC tuba, and the rumour is that the instrument can be played as a BBb tuba while depressing the 5th valve. It seems almost true. The problem is the result is persistently flat when pretending to be a BBb and that’s with all the slides in as far as they can go. I wonder whether it would be possible to manufacture a replacement slide that’s a tad shorter. If I only needed to swap slides when a BBb instrument is called for … I’d be laughing. What do you think? Is it something that can be done? Is there another way to sharpen the instrument. It’s only about 45c out of whack.

Nan

I've (via main slide extensions) lengthened B-flat tubas to A (for fun) and C tubas to B-natural (for fun) - mostly to explore the differing ease of playing particular orchestral excerpts which are written in particular keys.

They played about as well as with less tubing...and about as well in tune.

Back in the 70's, Miraphone sold auxiliary B-flat loop-the-loop main slides for 186 C tubas...
That was just too much bore distortion...Most judged the resultant B-flat tuba as horrible.

You're asking about lengthening a tuba by the same amount - a whole step.
Some might judge the resultant tuba as "fine" and others much judge it as "terrible", and it might depend on how picky they are.

You're probably not young enough to play a B-flat tuba anymore, nor old enough to play a B-flat tuba again.
(to clarify: a joke, which people who've been here longer might get...and NOT-AT-ALL a joke about you.)

Yeah that’s one of those old myths that perpetuates like a five valve CC being compensating because of the flat fifth valve. The closest thing that the fifth valve does is give you an F bugle that might have a chance of being in tune.

To get a true Bb bugle, you need to add about 2’ of tubing somewhere. Some manufacturers have shipped horns with a main tuning slide that can be swapped out. This idea is typically mediocre.

The Getzen had a setup where you could flip the valve and have a Bb bugle with fifth being a C bugle. Interesting concept.

I owned a Neptune. The fifth was short enough to kinda pull this off. You could rubber band the fifth in place and pull some slides and kinda get it to work but… subpar.

I wonder with the new Yamaha YBB-623 and YCB-623 with it's 2 main tuning slides are good candidates to add length. Seeing as the second tuning slide comes later in the bugle. So lengthening both tuning slides won't add as much cylinderical tubing in one area only unlike other normal tubas.

According to this webpage, the CSO York CC's were originally built with that functionality in mind.
https://www.yorkloyalist.com/cso-york-tubas

I'd like somebody to explain to me how properly functioning nodes in a CC tuba can be morphed into properly functioning BBb nodes just by lengthening a tuning slide. Seems the original design for hitting the harmonic series easily would just be out of whack if all you did was add tubing, and everything would be stuffy at best. (of course maybe you have to drop and un-drop a mouthpiece on the bell branch to get the switching back and forth to work?)

So, brass instruments that slot well and are "easy to play" just have better placed nodes than brass instruments that don't slot well and are "hard to play." If it's stuffy, it's a node problem. Sending the sound through tortuous tubing windings, as in "I have a lot of valves down for this note which makes it stuffy" isn't an air flow problem but a node problem.

Tubas vary so much as to which parts are somewhat tapered, greatly tapered, almost not tapered, and where these places occur that I don't think any of us who don't know a whole lot about this stuff can predict anything. I believe there are people who can predict it. There are fairly recently developed computer programs that can predict these things. I believe that without the assistance of this knowledge which is part of these programs, I wouldn't be enjoying playing a kaiser B-flat tuba with extremely manageable intonation, as most all legacy models that I've played in the past were pretty challenging to deal with.

The rest of us have to rely on trial and error as was relied on for hundreds of years. Even now that there is some sophisticated equipment and computer programming that can predict this sort of thing, part of that is based on trial and error itself and those trials are entered into their programming.

Trial and error is what tells me that those loop-the-loop C to B-flat Miraphone main tuning slides really mess things up.
Trial and error is also what has told me that goofing around with adding a semitone to a main tuning slides on various tubas I've owned really didn't mess things up very much at all... but I can't generalize that to all tubas, because I haven't tried it with all tubas.

bloke wrote: ↑Wed Dec 06, 2023 5:05 pm Back in the 70's, Miraphone sold auxiliary B-flat loop-the-loop main slides for 186 C tubas...
That was just too much bore distortion...Most judged the resultant B-flat tuba as horrible.

I have one of those. You are quite correct - I won't say horrible, but certainly not very good. I'm not sure when a company as good as Miraphone thinks it will work - are we just missing something about how to use it?

I think even a company as good as Miraphone might make something if they think there is a market for it.

Stryk wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2023 4:22 pm

bloke wrote: ↑Wed Dec 06, 2023 5:05 pm Back in the 70's, Miraphone sold auxiliary B-flat loop-the-loop main slides for 186 C tubas...
That was just too much bore distortion...Most judged the resultant B-flat tuba as horrible.

I have one of those. You are quite correct - I won't say horrible, but certainly not very good. I'm not sure when a company as good as Miraphone thinks it will work - are we just missing something about how to use it?

I don't believe Miraphone thought they were a good idea, but I suspect the Importer - located in Sun Valley, California at the time - had people asking if such a thing could be manufactured and sold to them to use while they learned how to play a C tuba. Back in the 1960s and '70s, there were fewer college "tuba majors", but there were still college tuba students who were pressured into buying C tubas "because".

To this day, tuba or low brass teachers who pretend to (or believe themselves to) be neutral about this in the United States almost never are, and phrase the making of the choice to their students in a C-biased way, whether or not they hear themselves doing it. About the only non-biased way to answer a student's question is to shrug one's shoulders and say that it's completely their choice, because it's going to be their instrument...

... LOL Several students of a particular teacher have told me that teacher - on the front end - told them that if they expected to go anywhere with the tuba, they would need to purchase one in C. Having heard that teacher play, that absolutist statement makes me chuckle, because I don't think any particular equipment could have possibly made any difference with them and their own playing.