Altering Conn Eb

[The Big Ben]

I picked up an 1886 Worchester Conn Eb 3 valve tuba recently. It sounds tremendous but I am thinking of altering it to play it full time. There's a guy near Clinton IA (Lee Stofer) who can do the work. Is it sacrilege to add a 4th valve and make other changes to bring it up to date?

Doug

Lee can do anything you want.

Personally, I'd leave it as is and get some sort of modern Eb horn. It will probably be cheaper in the long run than to have Lee modify it. Excellence don' come cheap. A new 4v Eb Cerveny is just under $3K at Dillon's.

[David Richoux]

Is it High Pitch? I am not a purist and I like to play my old horns when I can, and it seems like many (or most) horns from that era were modified to Low Pitch if they were still being used through the turn of the century. That is not a big change and it could be reversed later. Adding another valve is a bit much, IMO. Most of my Ebs are 3 valve and they do OK.

[Mike-ICR]

I think these classic horns deserve to be played. If adding a 4th valve will encourage you to play it than go for it. BTW tubatim89 has a 4v EEb Conn with no pistons. If the valve clusters are the same (except the 4th valve) and he's willing to part with it than you could make 1 great horn out of the 2 OK horns.

[Steve Inman]

I picked up an 1886 Worchester Conn Eb 3 valve tuba recently. It sounds tremendous but I am thinking of altering it to play it full time. There's a guy near Clinton IA (Lee Stofer) who can do the work. Is it sacrilege to add a 4th valve and make other changes to bring it up to date?

Doug

1. Lee can do it, if it can be done. As mentioned above, some horns may have tubing routed "tight" enough that there isn't room to easily add the 4th valve. Or, it may have to be added in the location where the compensating 4th valve is found (although not a compensating horn).
2. It is a bunch of brass tubes soldered together. It is not sacrilege.
3. You could play upper divisi with it, 2nd 'bone parts in quartet / quintet music, etc., and not need the 4th valve.
3a. It's not the ideal horn for extended low register playing anyway ... (i.e. not a contrabass horn), so choosing to use it as a bass tuba is one option to consider.

Good luck,

[OldsRecording]

Does it look like this?




You could perhaps add a 4th piston after the 3rd if you widen the 3rd slide, but I found the valveset angle to be not too great and in that case the 4th would make it even worse. I don't rememebr, but I seem to think that the tuning slide was pretty soon after the 3rd valve too.

Would a 4th rotary work? Maybe you could have a new main slide fabricated with a 4th valve (a la those old 5th valve add-ons for the Yamaha 321 euph).

[Kevin Hendrick]

Would a 4th rotary work? Maybe you could have a new main slide fabricated with a 4th valve (a la those old 5th valve add-ons for the Yamaha 321 euph).

Art Hovey's Tuba Logic web site has a page showing a Conn 12J with an added 4th rotor:

http://www.galvanizedjazz.com/tuba/frugalhorn.html