Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: FINALLY: DETACHABLE-BELL Eb HELICON PICS


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Posted by Joe S. on April 19, 2001 at 21:23:43:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: FINALLY: DETACHABLE-BELL Eb HELICON PICS posted by Klaus on April 19, 2001 at 21:08:24:

This tuba is REALLY flexible, as far as bending notes without the quality of the sound suffering...For instance, this thing (now, and also back when it was a leaky and badly dented EEb sousa) does those half-valve octave glissandos GREAT.

The F 1-3 and E 1-2-3 along with the lower Bb/A are very easy to fix without adjustments, but the (added upper slide and added ring) thing is an easy reach if I feel like grabbing for it.

In contrast, besides some inflexablilty of pitch (flat 2nd partial Eb, for instance) and not as "neat" of a sound, the 4-valve King that I used to have not only was harder on my left shoulder (with the 4th valve equipment reacting to gravity) but just "feeling" the four valves under my fingers caused me to instinctively USE them, and I know all of my "riffs" and patter in the language of THREE valves. (Does that make sense, or just sound stupid?) In other words, with four valves under my fingers (old King helicon), my auto-response was to use all of them and that interferred with the improvisation stuff that I developed over the years using THREE valves.

Incidentally, the false tones on this thing are really quite usable, and, being a fan of Rich Matteson (particularly worshipful of his rare recordings with the Dukes of Dixieland and Louis Armstrong using an EEb helicon) the thing just puts me in the right "place".


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