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Hi

On the 3 + 1 BBb compensators (eg Besson 994) the 4th valve reach is usually uncomfortable for most players . I find these tuba's are great for the Brass band stuff but are painful to hold.

Has anyone seen or come up with a linkage to be able to operate it from a more comfortable position - say the same reach as the 2nd valve slide? If someone made a linkage for a few hundred bucks that could be shipped and installed be a local repairer it would surely be popular. There must be hundreds of these tubas kicking around that are crying out for such a device.

They don't need to be pretty, just effective!

If you have a good repairman, have him cobble something like this together:



This is a Boosey 3+1 F that Chuck McAlexander (of NYC) tweaked to make the 4th valve work via a button next to the other valves. Pretty ingenious and works really smoothly. (and yeah; I'm leaving the picture this large so you can see some detail)

Yeah but I still want the 4th valve operated by the left hand, the brass band stuff is so fast that the 3 +1 setup works much better.

Seriously: I've played this instrument and there's virtually no difference between the setup shown and a regular 4th valve as far as speed is concerned.

The YBB-632 NEO has the fourth valve at an angle and closer (located between the 3rd valve slides).

http://ca.yamaha.com/en/products/musica ... mode=model" target="_blank

A good repairman could probably tweak a 994 to be similar, but that would cost a lot of money.

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You might be able to cobble some kind of lever, not unlike the one shown above, that would allow you to play the piston closer to the player.

I'm pretty sure that's Howard Johnson's hand in the big picture.
Rigging up something similar for left-hand operation would be no more complicated.
(I'm not saying it would be easy, but it could be done by any skilled and motivated person.)

Although I cannot claim to be a skilled craftsman, I made something similar to Howard's some years ago.
My linkage pulled the piston from the bottom instead of pushing it down from the top. It looked
shoddy, but it worked.

The new Wessex Excelsior will solve this problem with no greater reach than on the Eb tubas
http://www.wessex-tubas.co.uk/excelsior-is-conceived/" target="_blank

I will have the prototype Saturday to be playing it the following weekend with Championship band at Butlins.

The first batch of this completely new design of compensated BBb tuba will be available May

I guess I have three points of frustration:
- there are hundreds of these instruments that would be ok for their intended purpose but for the 4 th valve reach
- their is no 'off the shelf' kit to solve the problem
- at this point in time my only solution is to buy a Neo or Excelsior or faff around trying to cobble something together

Perhaps wessex could manufacture a batch of kits and market them!