Re: Human Error in Tuba Making


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Posted by Matt Walters on February 05, 2001 at 22:51:37:

In Reply to: Human Error in Tuba Making posted by Mr. Curious on February 05, 2001 at 17:27:56:


Imperfections causing personality in the way a horn sounds and plays. At this point in my personal learning curve, I have to believe that is indeed the case. Let's examine with something like a French Horn (alto tuba). What is the mystic about early Conn French horns? Conn now uses the same mandrels they did in the pre MexiConn years. Having worked on many vintage Conn 8D's and comparing them to modern manufactured ones, I have noticed a difference. The internal edges of slides, rotors, and knuckles are smoother on the older horns. An understandable result of washings and repairs over the years. Maybe crud build up also contributes.
The story of the old time practice of coating the inside of a new horn with milk (pre pasturized days) and letting it sit in the closet for awhile makes me wonder. That would in theory, fill in internal gaps and low spots. Most myths seem to have some basis in fact if you can dig far enough back in history.
So with very fine players, I have done some experiments. The results are that if I take a new horn and smooth out the jagged edges from obvious production irregularities, the result is a warmer, more heirloom quality to the sound. To a person looking for a new horn to play and sound similar to their old horn of 30 plus years, this seems to be AN answer to their needs.
Why is this so? If you tune a good violin with healthy strings, you'll enjoy a rich sound. If you nick a strand of a string at an odd point not exactly half the length of the string, you will induce strange overtones to the sound of the string. Even though you may tune the string to the desired pitch, there will be two partial strands now vibrating at different pitches and creating odd harmonics.
Now, if a person got used to hearing the violin played only with such damaged strings creating all sorts of weird harmonics, then replacing the strings with new healthy ones will sound dull and lifeless to them because of the lack of dissonant harmonics. Meanwhile a person used to hearing the same model violin played only with good strings, would listen to the violin with damaged strings (solder blobs, burrs, gaps, etc.) and think the sound harsh. This person would perceive the replacement by new, healthy strings as returning the violin (horn) to a rich and vibrant sound.
Another example. You want some of that Honky Tonk piano sound on your Steinway, just untune some strings on each note. If you like the Honky Tonk sound, don't look for it on a perfectly tuned Steinway. There is a place for both sounds.
Why these analogies? Just think of what can happen when a jagged burr of metal is in the internal air/sound stream of a brass instrument (tuba being my favorite). It can act like a reed vibrating at some frequency that will likely play hell with the sound and intonation of a horn. I suspect that in addition to a response difference ("Gee, I liked that Blatt 3000 but not this one".), a strange frequency matching and missmatching different notes has to modify the sound of a horn. How many horns out there have large changes the timbre of sound from note to note. You shouldn't want a horn to sound like you changed mouthpieces between each note.
These are some of my observations based on a physical approach to, "If I change such and such, what difference is felt and heard?"
Matt


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