What is this "tuba"?

[Bob Kolada]

http://tubahead.wordpress.com/category/iowa/

Sorry, the person holding it is a bit too weird for me to put the picture here.

[Tuba Guy]

Isn't that one of the Tornister tubas?

[David Richoux]

http://tubahead.wordpress.com/category/iowa/

Sorry, the person holding it is a bit too weird for me to put the picture here.

Don't know why - the blog in question is produced by a Tubenet member (John Manning) and that is his daughter (in zombie make-up for a Halloween event.)

here is his reply to the question:

This tuba (in F) is a mystery. I "inherited" it with the University of Iowa studio. We call it "franken-tuba" because it appears to be a hybrid made from the valves of an F tuba and the bell of a bass trombone? My wife took the shot and the zombie girl is my daughter.

[Bob Kolada]

I'm thinking it's something relatively homemade, that long horizontal slide is the 1st, and the top valve is a sharp 5th.

[UDELBR]

Toby Hanks used to have a thing just like that (might even be that) he called a "Fishhorn". He'd had it built so he could accept contrabass trombone gigs. Didn't sound anything like a contrabass trombone though...

EDIT: here's more info off the page where the picture is:

This tuba (in F) is a mystery. I “inherited” it with the University of Iowa studio. We call it “franken-tuba” because it appears to be a hybrid made from the valves of an F tuba and the bell of a bass trombone? My wife took the shot and the zombie girl is my daughter.

The more I look at it though, the more I'm convinced that's Toby's old Fishhorn, which may well have found its way to Iowa.

[JCalkin]

I played the horn in question during my time at Iowa.

Like John, I have no idea of the instrument's history (as he and I arrived at Iowa at the same time) but I can tell a bit about the horn.

It's very nearly cylindrical throughout, almost like an F bass baritone horn or rotary valve bass trombone, but its tone is very harsh, even abrasive when pushed. The intonation is, from what I remember, barely workable. That and as you can see from the pic, the bell is very nearly in the player's own ear due to its proximity to the mouthpiece. It's a bit disconcerting to play.

I attempted to use it one in orchestra; we were doing Elijah and the lead trombonist of our section wanted to downgrade instrument sizes to be more "appropriate." We tried a rehearsal on alto trombone, small-bore straight tenor, f-attachment tenor and me on the Frankentuba. The choir director just told us to quit messing around, and get our bigger horns out. I was thankful.