Posted by Rick Denney on January 28, 2001 at 18:11:03:
In Reply to: Re: Compensating Systems on Tubas posted by Kristian on January 27, 2001 at 18:54:20:
Much of this has to do with the range the instruments are played in. Euphoniumists dream of opportunities to play a pedal F (so hinted Gail Robertson at Fort Myer two days ago), and it is quite rare for tubas to be played a half octave down from their fundamental. And the euphonium literature that I heard this last week had a lot of stuff in the very low register, where the tuba literature tended upward rather than downward (except for a few special effects). If we had to play contrabass tubas frequently below the fundamental, we would probably be more interested in semi-double (aka compensating) and full double tubas. BBb tubas usually have four valves, CC tubas usually have five, and F tubas usually have five or six valves. EEb tubas were developed in Britain, like modern euphoniums, and use the compensation system. When the patent expired, other makers started making them, but the big compensating tubas (such as the BBb Sovereign) were not especially well received. The new CC protoype that was at the TUSAB conference last week was a non-compensator.
Rick "who thinks of a euph with the 4th valve pressed as a tiny F tuba" Denney