One issue that I have not mentioned is who I play with. If I was looking for an orchestral F to balance against a bass trombone player who has no use for a leadpipe, I might be looking for sheer weight of sound. Of course, if I was in that situation, they'd fire me and hire a good tuba player. My situation is a little less extreme. For large ensemble, my purpose for the instrument is to play upper band parts, mostly on orchestral transcriptions. I'm one of those who believes that a band can tolerate some voice variation in the tuba section, especially if there is an upper part that is more than just something to keep an Eb player from having to use false tones (as was usually the case with parts doubled at the octave in the really old band war horses). On orchestral transcriptions, those are usually the parts lifted from the orchestral tuba part, while the lower notes provide the string bass transcriptions. One example is a band transcription that we have played a couple of times of the Berlioz Damnation of Faust. So, I'm specifically looking to add the F-tuba character to the section sound as a distinct voice. But it does no good if it doesn't get out. For our group, the Yamaha 621 didn't do it, but the B&S does. The only way to get the 621 to carry was to put a very shallow mouthpiece in it and go trombone-like. Short of that, the ceiling was just too low for me.LJV wrote:The Symphonie was, as the bass trombone player called it, "dainty."(This is a guy who went through the whole "leadpipes are for girly-men thing," but is still a fine player.)
For any orchestra that I'm likely to ever have the opportunity to join, the trombone section won't be the sort that will think a Symphonie "dainty". And we should remember that it's a BIG F tuba by any standard prior to the last 15 years or so.
I don't know what it takes to avoid that hollow sound on a PT-12/15, but great players do it so my hat's off to them. For that, I might be more tempted by the Willson 3200R (the rotary version).
Rick "always interested in how people make these choices" Denney