Posted by the unknown hacksawman on January 13, 2000 at 00:25:34:
I have seen inquiries in the past about the possibility of CC sousas and 4-valve sousas.
The sousa that would be the easiest to do either of these to would be the King:
* Short-cutting the main tuning slide completely away and shortening the branch right after the valveset should be enough to shorten a King sousa to CC. My guess is that intonation would be OK, because no drastic change in the instuments taper would occur. With no tuning slide, one could still achieve satisfactory tuning by adding or taking away a tuning bit, although universal bits would need to be substituted for the current set that King supplies from the factory. (One could also slide the neckpipe in and out of the receiver for even finer tuning.) Of course, all of the valve slides would have to be cut...
* King is also the easiest brand of sousa to make into a four-valve instrument, because the #4 piston and casing from their "Symphony Bass" could be adapted and installed past #3 on the sousa. The bore size and styling are the same on the "Symphony Bass" tuba and their sousaphone.
Now that that's said, don't waste your time or money on dumb stuff like this, and don't EVEN think of asking me to help you with it. ;^)