Wessex model
Posted: Sat Dec 16, 2023 7:00 am
I did a few hours of work on a Wessex compensating B-flat tuba (yesterday) that looks to be a hodgepodge of parts. It's short, so I suspect It's a combination of a bunch of parts from the Jinbao 210 body - which is a Hirsbrunner knockoff - and some sort of large diameter bell that fit into that bottom bow. I'm thinking it might just be a regular compensating B-flat tuba bell that was cut shorter.
The person has owned it for several years, and told me that I did some work on it the past. I see where I had to take a slide apart and align it properly, and also saw where I had to solder the fourth valve casing to the instrument - and it needed that again. They also had me shorten the #1 slide circuit by a good bit and the #1 as well. Both were involved, as the #1 was hard to cut with all this other tubing in the way, and #3 was done in a different way - as its movable slide is a "loop the loop", which I just took apart and shortened, but it was a bunch of solder joints and stuff (along with two water keys - which had to be removed and reinstalled. Apparently there's a little bit of a miscalculation in the length of the instrument, because even though the main slide felt to me like it fit well enough , they wanted me to tighten up the tolerances between the main tuning slide tubes, as they reported that it falls out sometimes , and then they showed me that they were having to pull the slide way out to get it down to pitch. It also badly needed a so-called chem-clean. I played it a little bit afterwards, and oddly all the pitches from F in the staff down to B natural were pretty darn flat, even though that's over two different partials.
The thing makes a really pretty sound, but I'm not sure that I could generate enough growl with it to cut through when brass and percussion are really making a racket.
Does anyone know what model this was or is? ...I'm just curious.
The person has owned it for several years, and told me that I did some work on it the past. I see where I had to take a slide apart and align it properly, and also saw where I had to solder the fourth valve casing to the instrument - and it needed that again. They also had me shorten the #1 slide circuit by a good bit and the #1 as well. Both were involved, as the #1 was hard to cut with all this other tubing in the way, and #3 was done in a different way - as its movable slide is a "loop the loop", which I just took apart and shortened, but it was a bunch of solder joints and stuff (along with two water keys - which had to be removed and reinstalled. Apparently there's a little bit of a miscalculation in the length of the instrument, because even though the main slide felt to me like it fit well enough , they wanted me to tighten up the tolerances between the main tuning slide tubes, as they reported that it falls out sometimes , and then they showed me that they were having to pull the slide way out to get it down to pitch. It also badly needed a so-called chem-clean. I played it a little bit afterwards, and oddly all the pitches from F in the staff down to B natural were pretty darn flat, even though that's over two different partials.
The thing makes a really pretty sound, but I'm not sure that I could generate enough growl with it to cut through when brass and percussion are really making a racket.
Does anyone know what model this was or is? ...I'm just curious.