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Again, Ladies and Gentlemen, the problem has been resolved as good as it's going to get on a 36 year old tuba that suffered through some school system before being brought back to life and sold to me very inexpensively. Granted, the shorter bell means that the braces on the bugle past the tuning slide may be off a little bit, but with the number of braces on a 186 that would cause more than just one note to be out. I'm sure that this re-proportionment of cylindrical vs conical tubing has also narrowed the octaves slightly, but I can deal with it, as I don't have extreme range as a player. If my range ever gets that good, I'll get another tuba. One day if I decide to keep it for more than a couple of years I'll replace the dogleg. If not, I'll sell it as is, as I know I can get the $2k back out of it as I put into it. The deciding factors will be personal finances and whether or not I think I have an application for using the recording bell somewhere the souzy won't do.

Thanks to all of you for all of your input. Seriously. It has all been very helpful in analyzing and isolating the problem. I really do appreciate all the different viewpoints. In a pre-internet world this amount of good advice would have taken hours of correspondence, postage expense, and a massive long distance telephone bill otherwise. It is now time for this thread to end.

Alex C wrote:. . .

2) The problem with the bell is the differing taper between the Miraphone bell and the St. Pete bell. It's like putting a FoMoCo valve block on a GM engine... they don't match up.

3) the problem being centered on one note is weird, no help there... except I think it's the bell.

. . .

Can this happen with the Miraphone factory recording bell, too? I have a BBb 186 with removable recording bell, and I'm having the same problem needing extra care to get G (either fingering) or Gb to sound clearly. Unfortunately, I don't have a plain 186 to compare it to.

Every 186 BBb I've ever played has had a stuffy Ab-F below the staff. This isn't new. I had to switch back to American piston horns to get those notes back.

anotherjtm2 wrote:

Alex C wrote:. . .

2) The problem with the bell is the differing taper between the Miraphone bell and the St. Pete bell. It's like putting a FoMoCo valve block on a GM engine... they don't match up.

3) the problem being centered on one note is weird, no help there... except I think it's the bell.

. . .

Can this happen with the Miraphone factory recording bell, too? I have a BBb 186 with removable recording bell, and I'm having the same problem needing extra care to get G (either fingering) or Gb to sound clearly. Unfortunately, I don't have a plain 186 to compare it to.

If you notice, it's a twelve year old thread. Nevertheless, he fixed his problem by putting a Besson bell and stack on it. He says it works great and he is happy. Search on his name and you can read all about it.