TubeNet

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

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

Isn't that one of the Tornister tubas?

Bob Kolada wrote: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.

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

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.

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.