Re: Repairman Questions


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Posted by Rick Denney on September 22, 2002 at 20:19:19:

In Reply to: Repairman Questions posted by Mark on September 22, 2002 at 17:41:14:

In a word: Don't.

My Yamaha 621 F tuba also has a 14-inch bell. There's nothing wrong with 14-inch bells on small F tubas. I daresay that's about the size of the bell on most of the smaller F's, like the Alexander, and certainly the Meinl-Weston 182.

And the bore on your Amati is just fine for that horn. It would be prohibitively expensive to replace the valve section with a wider bore--you'd need to replace everything from the mouthpiece to the main tuning slide. You'd spend much less buying a larger F tuba in the first place.

I started on F with a Musica (I'd bet identical to your Amati), and it is a pretty typical old-style German F tuba. It responds well to finesse, and works better with a real F tuba mouthpiece. The one I had sounded quite decent on the staff and above it.

Learn to make music on this tuba as it is, and if you get to the point where you want something bigger and you know why you want something bigger, sell it and get a different tuba. If you take good care of it, you'll probably get most of your money out of it.

Rick "not opposed to putting a nice-sounding bell on an in-tune tuba body, but who thinks this isn't the time" Denney


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