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Maybe it is obvious to everyone else, but I don't get it. My traditional thinking was that an F horn was smaller and more nimble for high parts or solo playing. It seems a 5/4 version would lose those desired properties.

For that matter, why would you want a tuba at all for high parts or solo playing?

Here, here. If it ain't low, its a no go.

This list is long. Here is one example: Hungarian March.

Some folks like the nimbleness and range but still want a larger sound, particularly for orchestral use.

Hi-
I guess this poses the question-- what do you consider to be a 4/4 F, a 5/4 F and/ or a 6/4 F-- both in piston & rotor?

Mark

I find 3/4 F tubas to have a better, more even feel, response, low range,... Want a big F? Eb. Want a bigger sound on your small F? Practice more.

I was at the New Orleans French Quarter Festival a couple of years ago and saw a fellow playing a tuba with a jazz group in Lafayette Square. His horn had six valves and was a huge horn but from the visible tubing lengths I knew it could not have been a BBb or CC horn. I had a chance to speak with him. The horn was a HUGE F. If I remember correctly it was a B & S... like nothing from B & S I have ever seen before. He uses this big F as his primary horn and had an incredible range... both high and low.

He commented that us Americans don't always understand what goes on in the rest of The World.

That was most likely the Culbertson model.

In the right hands they are capable of a LOT... BUT the intonation is atrocious... deal breaker.

Sorry, but no. Euphoniums are pitched higher, contrabass tubas are pitched lower. Size varies within pitches, and saying that changing the size of a horn within a pitch area makes it a different instrument makes no sense.

Casca Grossa wrote:My sarcastic point was all tubas are 4/4 size. If you eat 4 quarters of a pie, you have eaten a full pie. If you eat 6 quarters, you have eaten a pie and a half. One company's 5/4 is another company's 4/4...there is no standard. It's just a way to market tuba's.

It's a perfectly good way to relatively size tubas within a company's product lines. But you're right, comparing one company's relative sizes to anothers is useless. Even though we all really know that size matters . . .

I have heard all the arguments and have decided that the 5/4 tuba is a lot like that breed of vehicles that is half truck/half SUV. It is not fully one or the other.

http://www.popcultmag.com/passingfancie ... /suv1.html

Kind of like this...
Some people might need seating for 6 but also have have a truck bed.

Most of us want this instead.
My two cents.

Rudy 6/4?