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Didn't Matt Walters have an old post where he shared his wisdom regarding this task? I would search the new and old TubeNet archives for an article from Matt, and key words like "trial" "try out" "shopping".

Or, perhaps someone knows where it is.

From my limited perspective, only having owned abouty a dozen different tubas in the past 2.5 decades, I give very strong consideration to: Intonation, tone/sound/"voice", and ease of playability. It's a compromise between these, and a certain tuba that is a dream to play may cause to be willing to pull slides a but more. Or that "magical rotary F tuba sound" may call out to you and cause you to choose a low CC note that takes a bit more work to play well.

When auditioning a prospective new horn, I would usually check intonation first to ensure there wasn't any really annoying problem (such as one of the very early MW 2141 Eb tubas before they fixed their intonation problems -- octave Eb's were not in tune on the horn I tried!). If the intonation is reasonable, with a "minimal" amount of slide pulling required ("minimum" is a personal thing), then I'd make sure I could play it easily throughout my available range -- no odd notes that didn't speak easily. Then I'd listen to the sound of the horn to see if it was consistent throughout my range, or if the sound lightened up significantly in the upper register, did I want that characteristic (may be nice in a bass tuba, depending on your application). It's quite helpful to play the tuba at a store where there is a tuba-playing salesperson available so you can hear the horn from across the room. If not, bring a fellow tubist-buddy to help you with this.

Repeat the process comparing only two horns at a time (not a group of three or four). Once you pick the best of the pair, the "loser" goes back to the shelf never again to be checked -- move on for your next comparison, following the same routine as before. (Alternately you could play right down the line first, checking only for "intonation dogs" and eliminate them before continuing with the other checks.)

That's how **I** would do this if I couldn't find Matt's previous posting.

Cheers,

Steve Inman wrote: That's how **I** would do this

I second his comments. Very well put.

Thanks, Sean.

I forgot to mention ergonomics. I rather presumed that if you pick up the tuba and it's obviously not a good physical fit for your body, you'd put it back on the shelf. But for more subtle things ....

If you pick up the tuba and in playing position it is turned at an odd angle (any direction), it slips off your lap, your right hand is turned at an odd angle, the spread between the valve buttons causes you to splay your fingers out wider than comfortable (I'm 6'1" and the MW "big valves" all do this to me), be sure to take note of this. Minor ergonomic issues during a 15 minute trial can become big ergonomic issues if this is your only horn and you play it for hours on end as it's new owner.

Height issues can be corrected by a tuba stand or minor surgery to reposition the lead pipe. Other notable ergonomic issues (in addition to the MW "big valves") that I'm aware of include... 1) the Yamaha YFB-621 right hand playing position feeling awkward to some, 2) my Yamaha Eb (381/321) leadpipe points out past my left shoulder (top action valves) so I must rotate the horn anti-clockwise (as viewed from above) to bring the mpc to my lips. Fortunately this horn plays a bit sharp so I've added a single sousa "tuning bit" which angles the mpc into good position without needing to rotate the horn very much. I'm sure several other ergonomic issues have been posted - you might try another search on the word "awkward" to see what you find. I believe most of these will fall into the categories of "too tall / too short", "can't reach around it (Besson 993 compensating BBb)", or "awkward right hand position".

Oh -- one last thing. If you plan to maniuplate the valve slides for on-the-fly tuning, be sure you can easily reach them whilst holding the horn in a comfortable and stable playing position. I've seen some horns where this is quite difficult. But often this can be fixed by adding a ring (or a short bit of metal rod and a ring) to the top of the tuning slide so you can reach it more readily.

TubeNet community -- did I forget anything else?

Cheers,

What I didn't see mentioned in the otherwise good discussion on play testing was response. In addition to ergonomics, intonation and sound, reponse can be very different from horn to horn, even of the same model. What I mean by reponse is how easily a note plays on first attack. I would play a chromatic scale from the bottom to the top of my range on each horn. Hold each note for about a second and pause between each note. On some horns the notes up and down the range will speak easily and quickly, while on other horns it may take more effort to hit the note dead on on first try. When I bought last 2 horns (King 2341 and Besson 983) I found very different results from different samples of the same model horn.

And do your research on all the models you are considering as well, both here on both the current and archived threads, and other places as well.

Oh, yeah -- and what bloke said. Just like anything of quality, in a few months you'll stop complaining about the few hundred dollars difference. You'll never stop complaining about an inferior instrument, even after you get rid of it.

Best tip when youre going to the shop to look at tubas : "look both ways before you cross the road"