Posted by chap on January 30, 2004 at 00:29:26:
In Reply to: V&E Tubas posted by Jay Bertolet on January 29, 2004 at 20:15:59:
I could think of nothing better for your colleague than a 4 valve Olds 99. .650ish bore, small, nice scale, cheap. If he absolutely must must must use his bass trombone mouthpiece, I'd have somebody make an adapter similar to those stuck in old Alexanders (only on a smaller scale), but he can probably find a similar sized tuba mouthpiece to his bass trombone gear. I think there's some overlap in the width of the cups of big bass trombone mouthpieces and smaller student mouthpieces. Bach's widest bass trombone cup is 28mm (1G) while Schilke's widest cup is 29mm (60). A Bach 32e has only a 29.5mm cup and a Schilke 62 is only 31.85mm. Bach 25 is 30.6mm and a 30e is 30mm. Marcinkiewicz's largest bass (contrabass) trombone mouthpiece (107) has a cup width of 30.15mm! I'm not familiar with Doug Elliot's product line, but maybe he could make a tuba shank to attach to a bass trombone cup???
IMHO, your colleague's requirements about the size of the receiver should be the LAST thing on his mind (there was my real point!). Compared to the price of a decent tuba, mouthpieces are cheap and so are replacement receivers. I'm sure that each of our favorite repair type guys have an old American Eb tuba receiver (or old Boosey one) that was the result of his customer wanting a normal sized receiver instead of a smaller one. a bass trombone shank will fit in one of these, but will rock just a bit.