Re: Stock tuba buying


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Posted by John Swensen on August 04, 2000 at 17:24:17:

In Reply to: Stock tuba buying posted by Dan on August 04, 2000 at 14:45:32:

Dan,
It is, indeed, possible to buy a new tuba and use it without modifications; however, some players make some changes to suit them. It is rare that major modifications are required, however. Also, there is a big difference in risk between shortening a tuning slide or replacing a linkage than changing leadpipes or bells.

Caveat: I don't make my living playing tuba, I know a genius who can fix just about anything if I screw it up, and I have learned quite a lot by breaking things over my lifetime. Don't try this at home unless you are prepared to pay in dollars, time, and humiliation for your mistakes.

To take a concrete example, I bought a B&S PT-6P about a year ago. It played pretty close to perfect as received, but after a few weeks I lightly lapped the slides for smoother action; that modification would have no effect on the sound, other than enabling me to adjust some notes faster than before. A few months later I gently beveled the slide ends, mostly to remove the slight burrs left during manufacturing; maybe the transitions between notes is smoother now, maybe not. I had a couple of rattling valve springs, so I wound some newer springs that are slightly softer than stock and switched those, as an experiment; I could reverse that change in about a minute. I later lapped the valves a bit to speed them up; the valves were quite usable in their original condition, and I could have ruined the horn if I overdid the lapping, but think I knew what I was doing.

As for slide cutting, if you tend to play on the low side of the pitch and your musical organization tunes sharp, you may need to cut one or more slides to stay in tune. I may cut a half inch or so off my fifth valve slide, one of these days, because it plays a tiny bit flat for me. A modification like this should have no effect on the tone quality of the horn, and can be reversed by leaving the slide out an extra half-inch, if necessary.

I replaced the felts and corks on the pistons with Besson rubberized felts, and I machined some spacers to adjust the valve alignment, as observed using a dental mirror in adjacent ports. I have also been experimenting with different valve guide materials (delrin, teflon, etc.), mostly for fun. I replaced the rotary valve bump-stops with Buna-N (nitrile rubber) O-ring material.

I don't particularly care for the fifth valve linkage, as it came from B&S, so I have been experimenting with different thumb levers. Right now I have a fully adjustable mechanism with a roller at the thumb end, which I like better than the B&S mechanism, but I may try something else in a few weeks. These changes have been "screwdriver replacements", and can be reversed in minutes.

None of these changes would mess up the horn, if done competently, and the horn was completely playable without them; they were just optimizations I decided to make over the course of a year.

If I decided to try a different leadpipe, I would enter the realm of experimentation, and the way my horn is put together, I would have to mess up the lacquer to unsolder the original leadpipe to try something else. I haven't had the urge to try this, as I love the sound of my tuba as it is, but I might change my mind after a few years, particularly if I heard of others having good luck with a particular modification.

Would I buy a horn that had definite playing problems, with the intent of making modifications after the sale? I considered, but didn't end up buying, an old Gronitz F that Floyd Cooley once owned, for which a different bell was predicted to solve some intonation problems (did you end up buying it, Dale?). I guess I would not consider buying a new, professional quality tuba that needed sound-related modifications, unless there was a known modification that worked for many players, and which I had tried and liked. However, some trumpet players swear by the Laskey modifications to their Bach trumpets, said to be like "blueprinting" a later Bach trumpet to play and sound like the CSO's matched set.


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