Open Bugle Length

[Dan Schultz]

Can someone please post the length of the open bugle on F, CC, Eb, and BBb tubas? Maybe even Bb euphoniums and Eb alto horns, too!

[Dean E]

Can someone please post the length of the open bugle on F, CC, Eb, and BBb tubas? Maybe even Bb euphoniums and Eb alto horns, too!

Try this alt.music.tuba newsgroup link for starters:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=bbbb+ ... net&rnum=3

The post reads:
". . . . A BBb tuba is 18 feet long, a CC tuba is 16 feet long, an Eb tuba is 13.5 feet long and an F tuba 12 feet long. Getting smaller, a Bb Euphonium (american baritone) is 9 feet long and a french C tuba is 8 feet long (but note that it has six valves, which could lengthen the tubing to the 16 foot length of a CC tuba).

On the other end, there have been several BBBb tubas (36 feet) made. There is one at Harvard and Carl Fischer owns one which used to be on display in the New York store. Both of them looked like Bessons. There were supposed to be four of those made for Sousa in the 20's just before his band broke up.

There was another one made supposedly by Conn for Sousa in the late 19th c. That horn is probably the horn found at Paxmans (London) in the 1950s and used by G Hoffnung. The horn was later sold and taken to South Africa (with the bell made detachable), where its whereabouts and condition are unknown.

There is a german style BBBb in Czecho, made by Bohland & Fuchs.

There have been some real EEbs (27 feet, not just a big 13.5 foot Eb), notably a Conn in the 30's and an EEb helicon in the '20s by an Austrian maker."