Re: what does a BBb Holton play like?


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Posted by Rick Denney on June 08, 2003 at 19:23:26:

In Reply to: what does a BBb Holton play like? posted by holton on June 06, 2003 at 23:30:38:

They are famously inconsistent, so I'll only comment on mine.

I think I can say without blushing that it is perhaps one of the best large BBb tubas ever made, in terms of playing characteristics. It is by far the best BBb tuba I've ever played. It is well-tuned and highly responsive, and has an open feel, mountains of flexibility, and an ungodly dynamic range. I can play it much softer, but with more more core to the sound, than any of my other tubas, including my F tuba. And I can play it far louder than any of them, by a large margin. The sound has a growl and a bit of edge to it that is not blatty at all but completely explains to me what pros mean when they use the word "character." It does not seem to have the woofiness that I get when I toot on large sousaphones.

The only fault in the playing is that the fourth valve low notes require a lot of special work to get right--air has to be fed to them just at the rate that allows resonance. More or less air kills the sound on those notes, sort of like the low C on a small F tuba. But the up side to that really open fourth valve is that you can use it in the staff without it sounding stuffy. When I played Silverado's opening solo on it recently, I needed a nice, easy slur from an bottom-space A to a second-space C, and it was crisper going from second valve to fourth valve, instead of to the first valve. A few measures later, the C alternated in a slurred pattern with the Eb above it in 16th notes, and doing it cleanly as a first-valve lip slur was beyond my skill. It came out just fine as a valve slur between the fourth and the first. The fourth on my York Master sounds fabulous on the low F, but it would not have sounded nearly as good in the middle of the staff.

On mine the third partial is dead on, and all pitches are manageable. When I play to a tuner, the fifth partial seems flat, but when I play in the group the pitches are always just right. On a recent recording of our band, my little solo at the end of Grainger's Children's March spent time in that partial, and the tuning was just fine, using first valve for C and open for D.

In terms of construction quality, the Holton is rather a mess. The valves are workable but clunky, and not as nice as the dreamy valves on my York Master. Lee had to perform minor surgery on several of the valve slides just to line them up. The first valve is too long. And they are all now old and likely to have seen some significant abuse.

You'd think I was talking it up to sell it for a confiscatory sum, but this one will not leave my hands without the help of the executor of my estate, unless I become too feeble to hold it upright, in which case I might well hire a bearer to hold it for me.

Rick "whose Holton experience started out good and is getting better as time goes on" Denney


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