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Let's say you had found a rather nice King Bb at a pretty decent price. It has 3 front valves, no top 1st slide and a top loop on the 3rd, the main slide after the valves, and a removable recording bell. What would be involved in converting it to a fixed up bell? Would finding a proper bell be the hardest part? The recording bell is in very nice shape.

Not THIS horn, but the same thing in silver-

Will the bells from both King Bb's and King Monster Eb's fit? It'd be nice to have a King bell on it, but whatever....

There aren't many King one piece bells out there for BBb. The Eb monster bell is what Matt used to put together the newer style 2341 and it's shortness causes the horn to be very sharp. There is a detachable raincatcher on Ebay now for like a hundred bucks. That's probably your best option. Then you can still use either bell and those bell fronts rock outside.Ed

Play it without the recording bell or any other bell. Do a little slide trimming, and you have got yourself the cheapest possible travelling tuba in CC.

Klaus

No clue, just thinking out loud... would a fixed bell conversion be any less expensive than obtaining an upright detachable bell? You could always have it soldered on, like my upright bell on my Marzan.

Sam Gnagey usually has some upright bells available in the $300-$500 range, depending on their condition.

Z-Tuba Dude wrote:Sam Gnagey usually has some upright bells available in the $300-$500 range, depending on their condition.

Yes, Sam is a good source. It really matters what he has around. Since he uses the bulk of a 1/2340-1 for his horns with other bells, he's bound to have bells and bell stacks around. I bought one from him that was kinda straight and kinda ugly but worked for $150 plus shipping a couple of years ago.(I knew what I was getting and was good with it.) He's had 'em from that price up to $500 over time.

Since he transplants bells for horn to horn, he might be one to advise and/or construct a BBb King with a one piece bell. However, getting a King upright bell would probably be the easiest and cheapest way to go.

If you need 'new', perhaps Kanstul could make you a King bell as they do for the big Conns and Martins.

Getting a separate detachable upright bell is a better option, because of the increased versatility you bring to the tuba for low comparative cost. That's why I have my particular 186. At the time I was shopping for it, Dan Oberloh had a King with both bells; by the time I got my $$ together, it was gone.

Also, King actually matched bells to horns, so if you change out the detachable bell for a "conventional" bell, you will change the mechanical impedance and "blow" characteristics of the horn, if not necessarily the intonation characteristics.

As I stated earlier there is a detachable upright King bell on Ebay now for about a hundred bucks. Ed

EdFirth wrote:As I stated earlier there is a detachable upright King bell on Ebay now for about a hundred bucks. Ed

Shhhhh!

Be careful fooling with the bells on those horns. I've found that there is a difference pitch-wise between the upright and detachable bells and those horns also came with a main tuning slide matched to the horn. Check to see if your main tuning slide has the last three digits of the serial number stamped into one of the ferrules. If you have a main slide with short 1" ferrules, you're probably in business. However... believe it or not... an upright detachable bell smaller than one of the original 22" ones may cause the horn to play seriously flat.

All that being said... there is no playability reason to seek a fixed bell replacement for these horns. As someone else mentioned... there are a few upright bells floating around.

There are loads of new parts like pistons, crooks, and slide tubes available for those horns.

If you have a good repair man that can fix it on the cheap I have an upright king bell that has been crushed in and has several cracks in it including one in the rim. PM me if you realllly need one.

I recently bought my schools old 4v King and after some dicussion with my instructor I decided that I wanted a fixed upright bell. We gave Lee Stofer a call and he set me up with a nice Meinl Weston Bill Bell model bell for it. Yeah it's on the small side but thats fine. I've had it back for about two weeks now and I love it. It sounds great and so far nothing seems too squirrely either. But, that's just my experience. The guys here know a lot more than I about this topic. Who knows, maybe I got lucky with this swap or maybe this is a combo that actually works. It works for me and that's all that matters.

The one I was looking at actually just sold. Sigh....