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What could a "W" mean on a tuba? Dave Fedderly has a 3450 tuba that says 3450W on the bell. He said he doesn't know.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that (at least for one company) it means "with case", although that sounds silly to me.

Art Hovey wrote:I seem to recall reading somewhere that (at least for one company) it means "with case", although that sounds silly to me.

I believe that is a Conn Selmer thing with the 2341. W= with wood case

Found out that they were experimenting with having the smaller valves versus the big valves found on most mw's. W stands for wide or with big valves. Since the "W" version won the experiments there will be no more w's
on the tubas even though they're the w version .

Yeah, thanks. Nuggets of knowledge are fun and informative.

bud wrote:Found out that they were experimenting with having the smaller valves versus the big valves found on most mw's. W stands for wide or with big valves. Since the "W" version won the experiments there will be no more w's
on the tubas even though they're the w version .

Do you mean that there have been recent experiments with smaller valves?

The 3450 came out recently; long after MW stopped using the small valve sets seen on the early 2145-2165s.

Interesting...

Were they experimenting with smaller bore valves or valves with the normal bore sizes but with a smaller diameter piston (like the old small valves)?

OK. With the above information... there must be 3450 tubas out there with SMALL valves. How can they be identified other that by knowing the piston measurements? Can someone elaborate further?

As far as I've been told, Jon Sass liked the smaller valves. Sounds like this tuba may have come out of the Hojo. Mr. Sass will have the only 3450 "Sassy" that's not "wide". Everyone else in decision making liked the big valves better for this tuba.

The 3450 that Mr. Fedderly had at Midwest was his own 'Sassy' model and it was INCREDIBLE! Makes me think more about selling my 184 CC...