Posted by fred young on April 04, 2001 at 16:52:10:
In Reply to: Re: King UB tubas posted by Greg Crider on April 03, 2001 at 15:02:51:
The valve slides were optimized for the best overall intonation possible in the descent from BBb to EE. With it you tune the open tone about 3 cents sharp for best results. See one of my spreadsheets at
http://www.plantrol.com/youngfj/tuba.html
Most of the old American tuba makers used the optimization to provide on the average the best intonation possible for students. Now the typical new tuba does not optimize the slide lengths, making them exactly long enough for use as single valves. The result is absolutely terrible sharpness for 23, 13 and 123 vale combinations. Of course, the slides can be pulled to correct this as one plays slow passages but it is a bit much to expect all the music teachers to be able to instruct every tubist to do so.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the typical well tuned piano is about 15 to 25 cents sharp in the tuba range. When these old tubas aforementioned are played is a piano accompanied solo the flatness you mention actually helps the overall musical effect.