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Greetings,

Question for you techs out there:

Could a Yamaha 201 bell be used as a replacement for a King 1240? The join at the bottom bow is about the same circumference (using my wife's flexible measuring tape) and it's about 21" tall before the bell really starts to flare. Any thoughts and comments would be great. Thanks!

Are you talking about replacing the detachable bell, or getting an entirely new bell?

I'm talking about replacing the whole bell with a fixed upright bell. So the bell would be removed where it meets the bottom bow and replaced with an upright.

Monster Eb/BBb bells definately fit, but they would put it in the key of B natural (because of the loss of length, ~42" tuba to ~34"). You would have to extend it to keep it BBb, cut it to make a CC, or keep it as a Ride of the Valkyries specialty tuba

That's why I'm curious to know if there's just a bell I can slap on to have an upright without having to cut and alter it. Although that answer is probably to just bide my time and save up for an upright detachable King bell...

Odd as it may sound.... a Yamaha YBB-201 or 321 bell will work fine on a Miraphone 186. But... I doubt if the results would be good on a King 1240. The flare is just too small and the taper is wrong.

You might contact Sam Gnagey to see if he has an upright bell he can sell. He's at tubanurse@yahoo.com" target="_blank

Sam Gnagey also cut a Conn monster Eb bell and used the recording bell tenon to make an upright detachable bell for a Reynolds (not the 0-99 size, the detachable bell one slightly bigger than a 1241). That's another option. Does any key know if Kanstul makes them in either the 19" or 22" size?