Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Raising the Pitch of a Horn


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Posted by Chuck(G) (too long) on February 28, 2004 at 13:49:10:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Raising the Pitch of a Horn posted by dp on February 28, 2004 at 13:15:56:

Probably--I think by the time the bore gets to be around 1.5", it doesn't matter too awfully much where the cut is made.

Manufacturers frequently swap bottom bows and bells around to make different models. York used the same bottom bow and bell on their BBb and Eb tubas.

I've had the experience of taking a do-it-yourself CC-from-BBb horn (no, I didn't do it) that had the entire 2 feet of tubing cut out in the area of the (inverted) main tuning slide. The result was an unplayable horn--there was simply no way to play certain notes and the overtone series didn't even line up well on the octaves. I couldn't believe that the horn was as bad as a BBb, so I fabricated parts and reconstructed the parts that had been cut. The result was a very well-intoned BBb, although I didn't care for the horn as a whole.

Maybe you recall that B&M Marzan CC that I had? Basically a York Master BBb, with Fred's special "tuning slide up" valveset installed. But Fred took the 2 feet out of the length right after the tuning slide to produce a very short and steeply-tapered bow. The result was a horn with very squirrely intonation, where the Marzan (and the York Master) BBb were pretty decent.

I recently took a bell-front York Master BBb and installed a York Monster Eb bell and bottom bow on it, which brought the pitch to about a B-natural. The remaining 10 or so inches I needed bring the horn to pitch was gotten by replacing one of the larger inner bows with a re-worked Pan American baritone top bow. This was far enough downstream from the valves that the intonation turned out pretty well (Note to Joe: The flat 3rd partial was due to a leak that I'd missed the first time around--it plays fine now). So, here we have a horn where the larger tapered sections have been completely replaced and it still plays well in tune.

Similarly, I took the valve section from a Conn 2J CC and grafted it to a York Monster Eb bell, bottom bow and top bow, with about an inch of the top bow shortened. Again, another good horn. I think it was because I left the smaller tubing from the 2J intact.

I'm with Joe--if you're going to tweak the tuning of a horn substantially, you might do best by taking the length out of the largest branches you can.



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