UncleBeer wrote:Rick Denney wrote: It seems to me that the difference in cross-sectional area tops out at a little less than 10%, which is a difference in diameter of less than 5%. That's like going from a 14.7mm bore (0.58", like a Besson) to 15.4mm (0.61"--much less than the 0.64" of a Willson 2950). On the face of it, I see no real evidence that these are different as a class, and not just swallowed up in each other's model variation.
And yet instruments sporting only these differences are built, sold, and chosen by professional players every single day. Imagine that.
Uncle "maybe they don't teach
everything in traffic engineer school" Beer
Well, now, that's a bit uncharitable. My point was that the data you showed to demonstrate a difference may not do that, which is a reasonable response to such data.
Yes, professional players choose the newer, larger instruments. Tuba players do that, too, but we see a growing trend to moderate that a bit, so maybe what pros do is at least partly governed by groupthink. I know--what standing do I have to say such things?
Here's a practical question: If you are tasked with playing, say, Pictures at an Exhibition, would you take a contrabass tuba, a bass tuba, a tenor tuba, a euphonium, a French C tuba, or your best wishes to the second-chair trombonist to play using
his euphonium? Most tuba players these days, if they take it on at all, would use a bass tuba or a euphonium. A few might use an Alex 151G, but those are not thick on the ground.
The question I asked was: What would the difference in sound be, if played by the same player using the same mouthpiece? My suspicion is that it would fit in the sound envelope most listeners would describe as "euphonium". But I haven't heard that experiment. I don't think that 10% difference in area in the bugle persuades me that the difference will glow in the dark, but who am I to speculate?
Rick "just looking at data and asking questions" Denney