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This just might be my imagination, but as I've played my Bach/Olds/whatever tuba for a while now, I've noticed that notes that require the 3rd valve don't seem to speak as quickly or clearly for me as the other notes. Could this be due to the "curly cue" wrap of the third valve tubing?

For any of you techs that have removed this "curly cue" (such as from Kings) have you or your customers noticed a change in response? Or, like I started with, is this all just in my head?

On another, but related topic, what is required to remove the curly cue and straighten the tubing? Extra tubing would be needed to make up for the curved sections yes? Can the inner tubing be used to "splice" tubes together? How have you gone about this?

Thanks for reading and/or responding!

I can't say if removal of the 3rd valve 'curly-cue' makes all that much difference in response.

I sort of associate it with the rear window of a '63 Corvette. In the couple of years following '63... many folks spent money to put a full rear window in their 'vettes as just a matter of updating the design.

The Kings seem to have more appeal without the 'curly-cue'. I think the reason why King did away with it was to reduce their part count and save money.... NOT to make the horn better.

The third valve double turn on the top of the horn is there to keep the tubing compact and avoid damage - especially in student use.

Back in the 1960s-70s Don Butterfield,and some of his students (like me) had the King repair department (which no longer exists) overhaul and modify some vintage Kings. All of them involved re-directing the third valve tubing and eliminating that extra turn. To this day I will use the third valve alone for some notes, especially low "G" on a BBb if it centers and is better for intonation, and eliminating the double turn facilitated this. King's .689 bore and Olds' .660 bore require perfect valve alignment and no leaks for those horn to play well.

I believe Walter Sear consulted for Olds on the O-99 ( I owned one of these in HS) and if memory serves the valve block and tubing was designed to have double-draw tubing AND be pretty much the same to the sousaphones Olds was making at that time. Olds made a lot of effort to make GOOD student line horns - as evidenced by their Ambassador trumpets, cornets and trombones - and their little baritone horn was pretty decent too. The Olds O-99 was a success in its day; I think Bach bought the jigs, mandrels etc. to make them under their name for good reason.

The current Conn 5J and King 2340-41 instruments eliminate that double turn and the horns benefit from it I believe. In 1972 I made absolutely no headway with King's (Seeburg) management (but certainly not George McCracken who was their design head at the time) about incorporating these changes into those models. They were backordered by 275 horns at the time and saw no reason to change anything, kind of like GM in those days.

When I was with the Disney I found the Yamaha guys to be cementheads too. Tried nine of their models and couldn't find a playable horn in the bunch. I excused myself from the program and have had nothing to do with manufacturers ever since - not that any of them are beating down my door!

Interestingly, I have never modified the double turn on my Martin Mammoth - the .721 bore, and the Martin's generous tapers do not require it - the horn blows just great and has since it was made in 1933!

Mark Heter