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the elephant wrote:The term just means a "homemade" horn (meaning made from parts from at least two horns) or a horn that has been hyper-modified, like with a lot of rerouted tubing or new tubing sections. Just adding a valve does not make a horn a so-clled Frankentuba. Putting on a new bell - maybe. Putting on a different valve section - definitely a Frankentuba.

Usually Frankentubas (or would that be Frankentuben?) are also very ugly, scarred, dented, etc. because the "lunatic" who did the work was not a brass tech, just really clever at eyeball engineering. Hence the association with a monster. Really nicely done horns are not usually called Frankentubas. At least that has been my personal experience with these things, and I have seen many of them, mostly pretty bad musical failures that were a "useful test bed"; but a few were real winners.

I am trying to make a horn right now. I am calling it a Frankentuba because that is such a fun word and the tuba will be half raw brass and half nickel-chrome. While my work is pretty darned neat and clean, the poor horn will still be pretty ugly due to the bizarre finish and unusual dimensions. Hopefully it will not end up merely a "useful test bed" (meaning a large paperweight) but will be somewhat usable. But it is my first such attempt and I expect less-than-wonderful results, musically.

I have heard this term used very specifically since about 1981. It is much older than that, and may have originated with Don Harry in the late 1960s. He would be the sort of clever fellow to coin such a term and also have the musical clout to make it enter our vocabulary.

Wade