TubeNet

Rumblebuffin wrote: Hope this is useful.

TheGoyWonder wrote:What if you swapped the bell for a 15" bell. Yamaha is usually good with parts, you could get a YEB-321 bell. Which wouldn't be cheap, but you'd get most of it back selling the Besson bell.

barry grrr-ero wrote:I had the "Parker cut" done on mine. It's a simple enough cut that any good tech. should be able to do it with little fuss. Just make sure they're cutting straight tubing and nothing tapered. As I recall, I think I had more than inch cut off on mine. But that was a long time ago. In addition to the 19" bell I installed the bigger and straighter leadpipe (with the bigger, American size receiver), so mine needed a bit of cutting. The low end was a tad stuffy but the sound of that tuba was simply amazing.

The “cut” amounts to shortening the back bow by up to 76mm, or 3 inches: This means removing up to 38mm, or 1.5 inches, from each side of the bow. Depending on how you play, and on what mouthpiece you use, and on which pitch you are trying to achieve, you may not need to cut the full 76mm; to help figure out how much you need to cut, remember that at room temperature, shortening an EEb tuba by a half-inch (12.7 mm) will raise the pitch by about 5 cents, so cutting 3 inches will raise the pitch by roughly 30 cents. Fletcher tried unsuccessfully to convince B&H that they should manufacture their instruments slightly sharp, thus allowing the player to adjust tuning either way; This seems like a no-brainer, but B&H didn't go for it until the second run of Sovereigns (all later Sovs have a shorter back bow, so they are effectively cut before leaving the factory).

The cut was originally applied to older instruments in the B&H Imperial and Besson New Standard class that were built in both high pitch and low pitch versions. The low-pitch (A=440) version had extra cylindrical tubing in the rear bow, which was easy to shorten. Unfortunately the rear bow was redesigned sometime in the seventies to make it continuously conical, so when cutting a later Imperial or an early Sovereign the taper of the cut ends has to be adjusted to fit it back into the ferrules, which adds to the cost

sousaphone68 wrote:One of the best descriptions that I have read of the Parker Cut was posted here by Mike W

The “cut” amounts to shortening the back bow by up to 76mm, or 3 inches: This means removing up to 38mm, or 1.5 inches, from each side of the bow. Depending on how you play, and on what mouthpiece you use, and on which pitch you are trying to achieve, you may not need to cut the full 76mm; to help figure out how much you need to cut, remember that at room temperature, shortening an EEb tuba by a half-inch (12.7 mm) will raise the pitch by about 5 cents, so cutting 3 inches will raise the pitch by roughly 30 cents. Fletcher tried unsuccessfully to convince B&H that they should manufacture their instruments slightly sharp, thus allowing the player to adjust tuning either way; This seems like a no-brainer, but B&H didn't go for it until the second run of Sovereigns (all later Sovs have a shorter back bow, so they are effectively cut before leaving the factory).

The cut was originally applied to older instruments in the B&H Imperial and Besson New Standard class that were built in both high pitch and low pitch versions. The low-pitch (A=440) version had extra cylindrical tubing in the rear bow, which was easy to shorten. Unfortunately the rear bow was redesigned sometime in the seventies to make it continuously conical, so when cutting a later Imperial or an early Sovereign the taper of the cut ends has to be adjusted to fit it back into the ferrules, which adds to the cost

There are other threads with photos showing the cut on the forum as well.
Cutting where your photos shows may raise the pitch but its not the Parker/Fletcher cut.

Edit

Link below is to a thread with pictures of the cut
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=38756&start=0" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank

barry grrr-ero wrote:"At my age, my hand and fingers just can't deal with the long compensating pistons any more.

barry grrr-ero wrote:"The parker cut (not Flech cut...he had a custom Eb)"

Funny, because it was Fletcher himself who showed me the Parker cut. At that time (late 1970's), the tubing going in and out of the back ferruels was perfectly straight. The intonation of the actual partials didn't change at all - everything just moved upward. The bigger bell and leader-pipe just made the sound a bit bigger and 'warmer'. I had anticipated that the octaves would be just slightly smaller in pitch. If I needed to 'nail' the high register, I'd compensate by putting a shallower mouthpiece in. Worked for me.

And yes, I play a rotary Neptune CC. It ain't perfect, but it's working for what I'm trying to do at this point. Maybe we should all just get electric basses and forget all this stuff.

barry grrr-ero wrote:"The parker cut (not Flech cut...he had a custom Eb)"

Funny, because it was Fletcher himself who showed me the Parker cut. At that time (late 1970's), the tubing going in and out of the back ferruels was perfectly straight. The intonation of the actual partials didn't change at all - everything just moved upward. The bigger bell and leader-pipe just made the sound a bit bigger and 'warmer'. I had anticipated that the octaves would be just slightly smaller in pitch. If I needed to 'nail' the high register, I'd compensate by putting a shallower mouthpiece in. Worked for me.

And yes, I play a rotary Neptune CC. It ain't perfect, but it's working for what I'm trying to do at this point. Maybe we should all just get electric basses and forget all this stuff.