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Try 1 + 5.

-Matt

As great as the Thors are below the staff, they are (at least to me) equally mediocre above the staff. I'm not knocking the horn because I do think they are great instruments for the price - at least relative to what some tubas are going for these days. Sticking just with the Meinl brand, the 2000 is way better to my ears above the staff - but it is now (sadly) almost twice the cost of the Thor.

I am not by any means a technician nor designer of tubas, but it does seem that design compromises are a fact of life. In this case, it really appears that MW went all-out designing a horn that would have that powerful easy low range, but they had to give up intonation and clarity up high. They made their choices, made the horn that way, and by most accounts it is a great success.

Now, when the inevitable struggles occur in the area of their purposely-compromised "issue-range", I think slightly weird alternate fingerings (as offered by the likes of great players like Matt Good above) or really long slide pulls, etc. are just going to have to be a fact of life. BUT WHY? I'm really asking this because I'd like to know more about why it's so hard to build a tuba that is in tune AND easy to play? It seems even saxophone makers from Taiwan have been able to pull this off...

Is the tuba just that much harder to make because of the length of "un-rolled" tube? The scale on the venerable Mira 186 seems to be universally accepted as closest to "perfect" - but that horn is no longer in vogue because of its "bland" sound. I wonder if all of this expensive R&D will take us some day back to the same 186, but now it costs $30K...

So wait; Bloke are you saying 35 works for the Eb?

bwtuba wrote: Now, when the inevitable struggles occur in the area of their purposely-compromised "issue-range", I think slightly weird alternate fingerings (as offered by the likes of great players like Matt Good above) or really long slide pulls, etc. are just going to have to be a fact of life. BUT WHY? I'm really asking this because I'd like to know more about why it's so hard to build a tuba that is in tune AND easy to play? It seems even saxophone makers from Taiwan have been able to pull this off...

Large (heavy tapered) tubas is a problem, an even bigger problem in the smaller ones (Eb & F)
A straight tube can't be in tune, and the non uniform taper of a tuba makes it even worse.

MW has of course taken the consequence of that, now releasing a large F with depended 5th & 6th
I know some diss it, but the ones actually tried it loves it for it's intonation, free blowingness and sound.

So..A tuba would be much easier to make if it wasn't due to the valves, size and tuning slides