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My understanding is that the label does not actually follow any kind of octave naming system.

http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary ... ation.html" target="_blank

They are now referred to as CC and BBb tuba even though they belong on different octaves. Same goes for EEb tuba.

BBBb is a rare subcontrabass tuba...

and the dreaded EEb....there is no standardization.

Any attempt to DERIVE the current naming scheme based on some sane system of notation is doomed to failure.

Trying to make it so is a fool's mission.

The received truth; use these terms and you will be understood:

C tuba - the obsolete French "teakettle"
Bb tuba - no such thing. If you mean "tenor tuba", then say so.
F tuba - bass tuba in F
Eb tuba - bass tuba in Eb
EEb tuba - large bass tuba in Eb (advertising hyperbole meant to imply an Eb to be used more like a BBb than an F)
CC tuba - contrabass tuba in C
BBb tuba - contrabass tuba in Bb

Anything else - whatever the owner wants to call it, there are no rules or conventions to guide you.

sloan wrote: EEb tuba - large bass tuba in Eb (advertising hyperbole meant to imply an Eb to be used more like a BBb than an F)

But mainly in Merry Old England and its more tractable colonies, true? In the US, Eb is Eb.

Donn wrote:

sloan wrote: EEb tuba - large bass tuba in Eb (advertising hyperbole meant to imply an Eb to be used more like a BBb than an F)

But mainly in Merry Old England and its more tractable colonies, true? In the US, Eb is Eb.

Blimey, mate - do the Yanks make Eb tubas?

sloan wrote:

Donn wrote:

sloan wrote: EEb tuba - large bass tuba in Eb (advertising hyperbole meant to imply an Eb to be used more like a BBb than an F)

But mainly in Merry Old England and its more tractable colonies, true? In the US, Eb is Eb.

Blimey, mate - do the Yanks make Eb tubas?

http://kanstulmusic.com/kanstul_tubas.html

I prefer to call it the Fbb tuba.

Kevin Hendrick wrote:
...
But mainly in Merry Old England and its more tractable colonies, true? In the US, Eb is Eb.

Blimey, mate - do the Yanks make Eb tubas?[/quote]
http://kanstulmusic.com/kanstul_tubas.html [/quote]

I figured they were Brits, because they call their tubas "EEb".

Let's not forget the E# tuba, too.

sloan wrote: I figured they were Brits, because they call their tubas "EEb".

They mean to sell them to Brits, perhaps.

Way back, when I first started getting confused about tubas, I was told that an Eb had 3 valves, but a 4 valve instrument was called an EEb as a marketing ploy, the cover story being that "it can play chromatically all the way down to the pedals, so it's 'virtually' a contrabass...". It seemed like a distinction worth making, and there were enough 4-valve instruments around to justify the different labels. I have the impression that most American Eb tubas had only three valves, so the question didn't arise in America until they started importing 4-valve instruments.

I was in a British brass band at that time, probably around 1976, so F and C/CC didn't get discussed much, but there must have been a dozen or so F and maybe several big CC in the country by then; I can remember an aging violin player asking me "Is that an orchestral tuba ?", when he actually meant "is that in F ?"