Posted by Jay Bertolet on January 24, 2001 at 15:21:29:
A few years back, there was a TUBA Journal article about the effort to create a 7 valve contrabass tuba. Do you remember that article? The thinking was to create an instrument that would have few, if any, intonation problems and excellent response qualities because you would never have to use more than one valve for any given note. In fact, someone actually made one of these horns (a Dr. Young, I believe) out of an old King tuba with some extra valve section. It was a heavy tuba but it worked.
My question: Why didn't this tuba catch on? Don't tell me that it is because of the awkward fingerings since we manage instruments with 6 valves commonly. I just don't imagine that the extra valve would make that big of a difference. Has anyone out there actually played on this instrument or one like it? I will admit that when I saw and read about this tuba, I thought it just might replace our current equipment with the new generations of tuba players. After the article I never heard anything else about it. Any comments?