Posted by Rick Denney on September 06, 2002 at 10:17:44:
In Reply to: If handmade is better - why? posted by Volker on September 06, 2002 at 06:50:56:
The first thing we have to do is define "hand-made."
Nearly all tubas are assembled by hand, meaning that they the solder is applied the old-fashioned way. Solder globs, therefore, can't be blamed on the construction method or the machinery, and are the responsibility of a real human being.
When I think of a "hand-made" tuba, I'm thinking that the outer branches are hand-hammered from a flat sheet. Even those tubas have machine-formed valve tubing, valve assemblies and tuning crooks.
Hand-made outer branches and bells can possibly have a sonic effect. The frequent annealing required to hand-hammer, say, a bottom bow or a bell will keep the brass uniformly soft, and free of residual stress. That uniformity might allow the brass to resonate differently than outer branches form in a hydraulic press. The latter method will result in variable work-hardening, and inevitably some parts of the brass will be pulling at other parts of the brass even when the horn is just sitting there. This has the effect of changing how the brass vibrates with the sound waves that pass through it. That vibration can affect the color of the sound in subtle ways, but I think the effect is likely to be so subtle that most folks won't be able to detect its effects reliably.
Then there are tubas that are "hand-tweaked", and I think this is likely to have a greater effect than any of the above. I suspect most professional tubas are tweaked in that fashion, but perhaps not in a way that satisfied a particular player. These tweaks are likely to account for most of the difference between examples of the same make and model, it seems to me.
Rick "whose ears aren't good enough to hear whether a tuba is 'hand-made'" Denney