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Yamaha 822 f lead pipe works wonders. Fits with no modification on a CB 50..... Made the horn play better top to bottom...

Very well-endowed beer girl.

I only played the Besson 983 in one specific situation when I tested it and didn’t buy it back in 1999.

I don’t remember it as an air hog. Rather I found it a stiff instrument that I could not get my air through. Especially so when trying it with the DW3L that was the mouthpiece that came with it. I wanted to try it with the DW1L, which I was warned against, as that was said to lower the pitch below A=440Hz. I insisted and the sound opened up a bit, but not sufficiently so. Btw. the pitch did not drop off at all. I decided on the Besson 981, which I found much more flexible and alive.

As I understood Besson back then, they deliberately made the 983 a leaner and less expansive tuba compared to the 981 by means of the leadpipe profile and by means of the smaller bell.

Point being that you have the option of modeling the sound of this 983 tuba. You may keep the current profile of the leadpipe. Or you may concentrate the expansion in the area right after the receiver.

Aside of the engraving, the lyre box, and the carrying rings the 982 is very hard to tell apart from the 981. But there is a small visual difference. The 982 has its leadpipe coming smoothly out of the receiver, whereas the 981 looks like the receiver crimps the leadpipe. (The 982 being called the parade model).

And no, I cannot give you exact measurements.

Klaus

I know EXACTLY what you're talking about with the CB-50. My former teacher switched out the original leadpipe with a Yamaha leadpipe. I can ask him exactly which one he used.

You asked for well-endowed beer girls. This is an e$pecially well-endowed woman with beer. Con$ervatively e$timated at over $100 M net worth.

bloke wrote:

tokuno wrote:Very well-endowed beer girl.

nope

Is some "eye-of-the-beholder" thing, or just sarasm...??

The valve section on an 822 is like .768". That would have to be cut shorter to where it is small enough to mate up to the .687" G50 first valve port.

Maybe they used a 621 pipe?

Isn't Lee Stofer working on some sort of refreshed CB-50 or something? Might be worth asking him?

As a matter-of-fact, I do have CB-50/G-50 leadpipes. Here's my experience with them;

I have heard from years that people thought the G-50 was a good idea, except for the Bob Rusk-inspired rotor-in-the-leadpipe, which was thought to harm the response, intonation, or both. I had serviced a couple of these instruments, and thought they actually played pretty well, but were nothing that I got excited about.

THEN, I was called and given the opportunity to buy the remainder of the parts from Getzen, about 5 pallet-loads of parts, I went further into debt, and my Getzen tuba adventure began.

To try to objectively research this premise, my first prototype was built as a 4-valve model, with a simple straight leadpipe. I suspect that the leadpipe is the Allied universal small tuba leadpipe. As I was in the process of building this horn, I realized that the leadpipe was too small at the large end, even in the full length, to mate with the tubing into the 1st valve, so I annealed the tube, put it on a mandrel and enlarged the taper through the larger half of the leadpipe, making it a bit more conical, and a more consitent taper throughout. I made a ferrule to mate the leadpipe with the valveset, and the end product was very solid in intonation and consistency. I now knew how well the instrument could play as a 4-piston tuba.

To address the other half of this issue, I had the priviledge of fully restoring a CB-50 for a customer last year, and upon disassembly, I found that the short leadpipe did not fit the rotor bore, but the large end of the pipe had been flared like a plumbing connection, and the difference filled with solder (aaack!). The leadpipe had some red-rot, so I cut, annealed and made a new leadpipe to really fit this horn, too. The result was just as solidly successful as the 4-valve version, so I can say that it is not necessarily the position of the rotor, but the fit-and-finish of the parts that makes the overwhelming difference in how well the tuba plays. The bottom register of both of these horns is rock-solid, larger and better than one would expect from that bore size.

To see how far this tuba design can be improved, I have sent a 4-piston valveset and a 5th rotor to Martin Wilk for his re-design. Instrument #1 has been sold, and instrument #2 and #3 are in process. Serial #0002 will be built with MAW valves, and #0003 will be constructed with conventional valves, and then some A/B testing will be done to determine what benefits are derived from each.

As for the 983, good luck getting anything from Buffet Group. I would suggest looking at a King 2341 pipe, since it and the 983 both have essentially the same-bore valveset. It might not fit without modification, but might fit well with a little extra work.

Bloke,
Why on Earth would you want to have a relatively easy time of it at work, and make good money, too?

If you cannot get an original 983 pipe, you will have to handle that turn anyway.

Oh, wow! Some things you just can't un-see!

bloke wrote:yeah Klaus,

I can make either 'pipe, but I'd rather sit here in my sweaty underwear and post about them on TubeNet...just like we're doing right now...

You slimmed down?

Can't remember if the Yamaha pipe needed to be cut... If it was, when the cutting was done it fit even better into the ferrule than the old pipe and curvature worked well.