Posted by JoeS on February 15, 2003 at 17:40:31:
In Reply to: Mirafone Eb bell posted by Steve C on February 15, 2003 at 16:28:46:
Occasionally, I'll locate a 4/4-size "fixed" upright bell which has been ruined (not worth fixing - tears, spider cracks, patches, too thin, etc. on the flair).
I'll unsolder the ELBOW section out of a "good" (but not desired) recording bell, keeping the flair and the male collar. Next, I'll iron all of the dents out of the "throat" area of the acquired ruined bell. After that, I slide the ruined bell up inside the male collar, make careful marks (allowing for things not quite sitting as they finally will) and then I slide the ruined bell up inside the solder-joint end of the flair, making similar marks on the ruined bell in similar ways - making the same allowances.
The next stage is to chunk-cut the "stack" area out of that ruined bell that I will be needing (leaving some excess length on both ends, to be safe). After re-re-re-measuring both ends and very carefully marking lines on which to cut, I tin-snip both ends of the "stack" to be soldered between the male collar and the flair.
Once soldered in place and cleaned up, I have converted a detachable "recording" bell to a detachable "upright" bell - keeping the same flair and the same character of sound.
The biggest "trick" is to find a ruined upright bell that is a very close approximation - in bore and taper - to the recording bell.
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Though it may be argued that this is very labor-intensive, I can usually "get through" something like this in about an hour or two, and it can make the difference between a bunch of non-interested "recording tuba" poo-poo-ers, and several folks interested in purchasing my "concert" tuba.