Posted by Chuck(G) on October 27, 2001 at 11:28:21:
In Reply to: Re: Taper and intonation posted by Rick Denney on October 26, 2001 at 17:20:04:
I'm more or less with Matt on the issue of leadpipes. It would be interesting to take a hunk of plain tubing and solder a mouthpiece receiver to it--no taper whatever and see what that does to the intonation. If someone's already done this, let me know and I'll skip doing this one myself.
But to differ with Matt, there ARE some true stinkers intonation-wise in the tuba world. Instruments that can't be lipped into tune to produce a satisfactory tone without major slide manipulation. CC's with first-line G so flat that it reads F# on the first blow.
Flat first-line G on CC tubas is fairly common, but when's the last time you played an Eb tuba with a horribly flat second-line Bb? Why is this?
I've got a suspicion that many European CCs start life on the drafting board as BBb instruments and then are shortened sometime after the BBbs have been put into production to make them play in CC. And it would make sense--tooling for the large branches is very expensive, so why not make it do double-duty? This also keeps inventory issues simpler--you need only stock the smaller parts that are needed to change a BBb into a CC. The implication here is that the BBb versions of these instruments will usually be better than the CC.
In particular, it would be interesting to hear from the BBS poster who recently purchased a 6/4 Nirschl BBb regarding the intonation on his instrument.
If someone can authoritatively disabuse me of this mis-perception, I'd be grateful.
Chuck "always willing to learn something new" G.