TubaForum.net

Hey folks,

I'm planning to add a second horn to the mix within the next few months. So long as I haven't made some egregious tax payment miscalculation, I'm shooting for February or March. These are my requirements:

Bb, 4 valves, front action, straight bell, under $3500 "out the door". I'm not opposed to any particular horn, but one type I'm strongly considering is the current batch of what appear to my (inexperienced) eyes as Yamaha 621 copies, so I'll just limit this post to those. These 3 all make the cut, and I can probably try one of each if I'm patient and willing to drive a bit.

Tuba Exchange TE-690L
https://www.tubaexchange.com/products/t ... dab1&_ss=r

Mack Brass TU422L
https://mackbrass.com/tu-422l-3%2F4-bbb-tuba

John Packer JP179B
https://www.jpmusicalinstruments.com/pr ... p179b-tuba

I know Three Valves has the 422. Has anyone else played any/some/all of these and would you be willing to provide any feedback? Are there any similar horns I should be looking at but don't have listed here?

Thank you all so much!

I really like the Packer tuba and I think someone on here has one for a very good price if you do a search

I have a Mack 422 too. I've had it since May or June. I'm mainly a trombone player, and other tubas have been hard for me to play. This one is pretty easy. The valves are good. Some of the slides are pretty tight, but I've been working them with sand paper to loosen up a little. The 422 comes with a 14 or a 16" bell. Tom says the 16 just sounds a lot bigger, so that's what I got. Plus it stands on its bell ok with the 16, I imagine the 14 falls over if you don't have an 8 pound mouthpiece.

One thing I really like about it is that it has a single spit valve. I can't tell you how much 4 spit valves annoy a trombone player. I've had to label the slides so I know which one to dump. There are two slides that fill up sometimes, but it takes a bit of playing to make that happen.

It comes with a 24aw type mouthpiece, which sounds good on it, but I wasn't fond of the wide rim. So I play it mainly with a Kelly 25. I've also got a DW 5L that lets me worry less about tuba chops. It seems to work on a wide range of mouthpieces, but I've been gravitating toward the smaller diameter ones just because of my existing trombone chops that I don't want to mess up too badly. The mouthpieces certainly affect the sound. The 24aw, while I know it's kind of a reviled mouthpiece, does give this horn a big sound. Kelly HB and 18 also sound pretty good.

It seems to have a decent low range and a very good high range, for a tuba. It's not excessively loud. Again, I'm not much of a judge of tubas, but based on sitting next to them in orchestras for years, I would expect a tuba to be louder. It's loud enough to annoy my wife, but I haven't made my neighbor come over and complain yet. Gotta have goals.

I use a strap to play so I can play one handed when necessary. I think it weighs 16 lbs. I tend to play really sharp on trombone (pull slide 2-3 inches) and the same thing happens on this horn. I think that's just a chop problem, though. I haven't really nailed down the intonation on it yet, but it seems reasonable. Again, trombone players have a different way of dealing with intonation, and I'm still getting used to that. I don't have that much practice time, and dividing it between tenor, bass, euph and tuba has made it tough to make real progress anywhere.

It comes with a case, but between Covid shut down and not being a real tuba player yet, I haven't taken it out of the house yet. It is the standard Jinbao type case. Foambody, wheels.

You could certainly play this with a quintet or small church band. You might need some backup if you play it with a big orchestra or a 50 piece concert band. Good for marching since it's small. Good german band horn.

sdloveless wrote: ↑Fri Oct 09, 2020 12:50 pm Hey folks,

I'm planning to add a second horn to the mix within the next few months. So long as I haven't made some egregious tax payment miscalculation, I'm shooting for February or March. These are my requirements:

Bb, 4 valves, front action, straight bell, under $3500 "out the door". I'm not opposed to any particular horn...

Might you consider one of these (new/open box) ?

short, with 15" bell
large (.768") bore
4 rotary valves
very high-grade fit/finish

This is extremely similar to the Cerveny "Arion" model, but (well...) with better linkage than on the Arion .

info/specs: https://www.jpmusicalinstruments.com/pr ... ng-bb-tuba


...and (though I don't want to knock someone out of selling their very nice used tuba) I could do you VERY well on a JP179B as well, but you'll have to message me for that price.

I own a 379. It's very much like a miraphone 186 with a 16" bell

The 379 is even a good smaller, primary tuba!!

I chose the 422 over similar models cited above because of the larger bell, that I had done business with Mack Brass before, as well as lower cost.

It doesn’t have the presence of a larger tuba, but it does not have a blatty small tuba sound either.

It plays in tune and gets along well with my small ensemble.

I’m terms of quality the valves are good, but the slides are tight and uneven. Fortunately all but the main and forth slides I play all the way in. 1+4 about an inch out.

I’ll see if the lacquer holds out. My last have failure where my sweaty left hand held it. Now I keep a glove on it.

One of the valve felts got saturated with oil and turned out to be the source of an annoying valve whistle. It got to be like a coo coo clock.

Once discovered, I just dried it out and went right back to tooting whistle-free!!

Matt Walters speaks highly of the EBB-226. I know Dillon Music had a huge discount on them about 6 months ago.

It’s about the same size as the YBB-621 but with a more typical valve and slide layout.

matt g wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2020 8:35 am Matt Walters speaks highly of the EBB-226. I know Dillon Music had a huge discount on them about 6 months ago.

It’s about the same size as the YBB-621 but with a more typical valve and slide layout.

Those are also on my radar, but are different enough from the 621 that I didn't think it was appropriate for me to include them in this thread. Baltimore Brass has a used one in my price range, though no doubt it will be long gone before I'm ready to pull the trigger on a new horn.

sdloveless wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2020 9:56 am

matt g wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2020 8:35 am Matt Walters speaks highly of the EBB-226. I know Dillon Music had a huge discount on them about 6 months ago.

It’s about the same size as the YBB-621 but with a more typical valve and slide layout.

Those are also on my radar, but are different enough from the 621 that I didn't think it was appropriate for me to include them in this thread. Baltimore Brass has a used one in my price range, though no doubt it will be long gone before I'm ready to pull the trigger on a new horn.

I think the bugle is effectively the same as the others, just that Eastman engineered the other valve set they have into that design, likely for good reasons.

matt g wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2020 10:38 am I think the bugle is effectively the same as the others, just that Eastman engineered the other valve set they have into that design, likely for good reasons.

It does look that way, doesn't it? I had excluded it strictly because of the American style valve section.

Dan Schultz had a Mirafone 184 for about that price a while back. Not sure if he sold it or not.

+1 on the Packer 379 Bb. It’s a great little instrument