Posted by Popeye, again. on April 15, 2003 at 19:10:50:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How to stuff a PT-6 posted by Rick Denney on April 15, 2003 at 14:08:04:
You know, we who don't have the stuff around to easily bend brand new tuba bows of different tapers can only monkey around with little things:
- We can add or remove globs of metal (or add/remove thin coats of finish - or other foreign material) to the exteriors of our instruments or to instrument parts.
- We can change mouthpieces.
- If we really want to think we're making profound changes, we can order a different mouthpipe or bell - provided the manufacturer (for 99% of us) fits it to the proper shape ahead of time.
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Why does such excitement occur when a manufacturer comes out with a truly new (or even altered - such as the King BBb cut-down to CC (Conn) / MW-2000 (MW-2155) / Miraphone 188 ("blown-out" 186), etc.) model of tuba?...
...It's because their factory differences and improvements, compared to ours, are profound.
There are many many tubas that offer great sound without without the little list of do-dads above. Let's look towards these tubas with great sound offering us easier-to-play scales. Willson, for instance, has pulled off a pretty good balance of sound/intonation with their 3050 and 3100 series. Meinl Weston's redo of the 2155 as the "2000" model is another tuba that offers great sound and a very good scale. Though many poo-poo the MW-2165, there's yet another large tuba that has a nice sound and a very good scale (and a few players have finally realized that it needs a slightly smaller mouthpipe taper to be a "great" tuba.)
We can d*ck around will little stuff, but better to be cheerleaders for the manufacturers - thanking them for their efforts (realizing that most of these very fragile "factories" are just 5-15 guys working in old farm houses out in the middle of nowhere), coming to agreements (as a body of tuba players) about the minor problems of these existing models, and asking the manufacturers if they would consider trying to continue to tweak their models' intonation for even easier playing and subsequently even more fun.
Popeye "I yam what I yam, and still say that I can make a tuba sound better devoting three hours to practice than devoting three hours to stripping off its cellulose lacquer." the Sailor Man