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I'll start with a disclaimer - I've played tuba for most of my life. However, I have no technical expertise at all. I have never taken a rotary valve apart and would probably never be able to get it back together if I made the mistake of taking it a part. Thus, the idea of having a "project horn," or taking a tuba apart to take measurements and try different configurations is not in the cards. Nor am I in a position to buy all of the horns I want to experiment playing them all.

So this may be a very simple question for those of you who DO have technical expertise -

There is a lot of talk about American vs. German tubas and the difference in taper causing different tonal properties. However I've never seen a similar analysis of British Eb or BBb tubas. Can anyone briefly explain (aside from the obvious valve placement) where these fall on the taper continuum? Closer to American or German?

Related, sort of, while it is widely accepted in England to play the Eb in orchestra, when they need a bigger horn, why not use the upright BBb horns? Has anyone done this or seen this done with success?

I'd put British tubas more towards the "American" style than "German". The hallmarks of the German style horns (i.e. front action, rotary valves, large bore, stovepipe bell taper, small bell flare) don't show up in the british tubas in general. Besides the compensating valve block, the British tubas are essentialy the same in many aspects to the style of horns in the US.

There are real experts on this out there. Clifford Bevan [https://www.amazon.com/Tuba-Family-Clif ... 0684154773 wrote about British as opposed to continental instruments. As far as I understand it, the sad tale is as follows:
1. British brass band basses are simply bass saxhorns with the same proportions as far as feasible as all the brass band conical instruments. They used Adolphe Saxe's designs as altered and doctored between 1850 and 1890s.
2. Thus each group is pro rata deeper but similarly tapered - Eb cornets/Bb cornets/Eb tenor horns/Bb baritone/Eb basses/Bb basses. The euphonium I believe was given a wider taper later towards the bell although it is the same length of course as the Bb baritone.
3. This gave the original Imperial Eb and Bb basses their fabulous, clean, punchy sound.
4. Then the terrible Great Hooting epidemic of fat, ugly, bland, loud as possible brass playing 1960 - 2019 swept across the world.
5. The above disease was contracted by the British Brassband world and soon every band had to have bigger, fatter, less musical instruments. The makers obviously revelled in this and it was then that the 'taper' issue began to come to plague the British tuba saga. They stopped being pure 'bass and contrabass saxhorns' and each maker played around with different bits especially of course the bell and mouthpipe.
6. USA and continental bass tubas come from a different heritage. Before the Great Hooting, the continental tuba grew from the basshorn/ophicleide tradition with a slower and more narrow taper. You can see this on the fabulous picture at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tuba-Marchin ... Sw8VtcQM3D" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank.
7 USA and continental contrabass tubas in bore and taper seem to have come from the Russian/German tradition which used a narrow bell on a wide bore to give a pungent, penetrating and focussed sound. The sousaphone and the Great Hooting has destroyed this of course. This has ensured that paradoxically the monster tubas' sound is lost in fff tutti passages. The bell and bore remove the higher harmonics within the low notes rendering them inaudible and absorbed by the timps, basses and bones. [but I am not allowed to state that.]

2ba4t wrote:There are real experts on this out there. Clifford Bevan [https://www.amazon.com/Tuba-Family-Clif ... 0684154773 wrote about British as opposed to continental instruments. As far as I understand it, the sad tale is as follows:
1. British brass band basses are simply bass saxhorns with the same proportions as far as feasible as all the brass band conical instruments. They used Adolphe Saxe's designs as altered and doctored between 1850 and 1890s.
2. Thus each group is pro rata deeper but similarly tapered - Eb cornets/Bb cornets/Eb tenor horns/Bb baritone/Eb basses/Bb basses. The euphonium I believe was given a wider taper later towards the bell although it is the same length of course as the Bb baritone.
3. This gave the original Imperial Eb and Bb basses their fabulous, clean, punchy sound.
4. Then the terrible Great Hooting epidemic of fat, ugly, bland, loud as possible brass playing 1960 - 2019 swept across the world.
5. The above disease was contracted by the British Brassband world and soon every band had to have bigger, fatter, less musical instruments. The makers obviously revelled in this and it was then that the 'taper' issue began to come to plague the British tuba saga. They stopped being pure 'bass and contrabass saxhorns' and each maker played around with different bits especially of course the bell and mouthpipe.
6. USA and continental bass tubas come from a different heritage. Before the Great Hooting, the continental tuba grew from the basshorn/ophicleide tradition with a slower and more narrow taper. You can see this on the fabulous picture at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tuba-Marchin ... Sw8VtcQM3D" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank.
7 USA and continental contrabass tubas in bore and taper seem to have come from the Russian/German tradition which used a narrow bell on a wide bore to give a pungent, penetrating and focussed sound. The sousaphone and the Great Hooting has destroyed this of course. This has ensured that paradoxically the monster tubas' sound is lost in fff tutti passages. The bell and bore remove the higher harmonics within the low notes rendering them inaudible and absorbed by the timps, basses and bones. [but I am not allowed to state that.]

This is absolutely wonderful. Thank you. I'm going to have to get a copy of that book!

And "Great Hooting" will have me cracking up all day.

That was interesting, but at #6 it looks like the rant got the better of you and things don't add up. "Continental" tubas looked like ophicleides until 1960? The Germans and Czechs were making tubas of generous proportion the whole 20th century, does "continental" refer to some other continent? Not that it really bears on the topic, but it makes it hard to decide what "narrow taper" means to you.

bloke wrote:In recent years, various makers' comp. BBb's seem to feature slightly fatter bells, wider flare pancakes, and worse intonation, but the old bells are pretty good substitutes for Miraphone 186 bells.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bessophone:
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=61956&p=687709#p687709" target="_blank

And also:

http://www.rogerbobo.com/instruments/d_tuba.shtml" target="_blank

I do not endorse this comment [https://www.reddit.com/r/Tuba/comments/ ... e_tubenet/]. But I am forced, in order to preserve my sanity, politely to use a template I have prepared for some standard tubenet responses:
1) cf Carew – Elegy on the Death of … Donne - line 25.
2) We all relish intelligent and relevant fair comment and just tough criticism but please research details thoroughly before contradicting.
3) Please do your own research. I ain't here to be tempted to do it for you. You disagree with facts – fine by me.

Notwithstanding:
' "Continental" tubas looked like ophicleides until 1960? ' No; I wrote: Before the Great Hooting, the continental tuba grew from the basshorn/ophicleide tradition with a slower and more narrow taper. This is the bass F tuba.
'The Germans and Czechs were making tubas of generous proportion the whole 20th century' - Yes. I wrote: 'USA and continental contrabass tubas in bore and taper seem to have come from the Russian/German tradition which used a narrow bell on a wide bore to give a pungent, penetrating and focussed sound.' Czechoslovakia became that named state only in 1918 - before that it was subsumed by Germanic or Russian regimes so obviously the tubas made cannot be called Czechoslovakian on tubenet otherwise someone would have picked up on that.
'does "continental" refer to some other continent?' Obviously, I mean Antarctica.
'Not that it really bears on the topic' - Here, I am pleased to inform the most honourable court that m'learned friend and I are at one.
'but it makes it hard to decide what "narrow taper" means to you'. Guilty - 'a slower and more narrow taper' is appalling English. It should be 'narrower'. 'Slower' is meant to suggest that it gets bigger more slowly; 'more narrow' is meant to mean that it does not reach as large a bore ultimately as comparative instruments.
Darn it, now I have joined in, again!!! Sorry, Carew.

2ba4t wrote: Then the terrible Great Hooting epidemic of fat, ugly, bland, loud as possible brass playing 1960 - 2019 swept across the world.

I didn't know things are so bad.

Any chance of an improvement in 2020?

Or will it just get worse and worse? Just endlessly, big, fat, ugly, loud . . . sweeping the world . . . . . . . .

So hopeless.

Hup

Oh, Pachyderm, thou art a man of infinite good taste and wisdom. Photogravure of this standard in colour is a true delight. Just look at that hand on the valves!!!!! And, on subject, look at the bass’s taper. Please post it. I cannot do so.

It is definitely an F [or Eb] because of the length of the first valve slide. This proves that the earliest non-Sax continental bass [not contrabass] tubas were ophicleide-like beasts with a few piston - then rotary - valves, spread along them [Wieprecht/Moritz etc] morphing into tubas such as that shown and moving on. This is the heritage of the F tuba.

The Russian CC and Austro-Hungarian BBb were built however to create a really broad and organ like sound. They used as large a bore as would play in tune. RANT WARNING -But still with a punchy bell. They did not want to lose all that work by using a huge flange dissipating the energy. They left that mistake for the Great Hooting generations. END OF RANT.

Sax’s tradition was absolutely different. He was into building ‘families’ of instruments that would play perfectly with one another. Thus he, and many others, created - from piccolo to contrabass- sets of integrated brass instruments. They were all based on the same taper and profile. Exceptions are his weird saxtubas [also note your Civil War basses with very narrow bores and slow tapers].

British Brass Band bass taper was inherited from the French, with pistons. And they also adopted the Bb Eb syndrome. Some German rotary instruments were used in the British Army as witnessed by pictures in some 1890s ‘Bombardon’ tutors I dug up in the Bodleian some 40 years ago. But very soon the British Brass Band had settled on its own culture. Originally, this culture was of narrow bore mouthpipes, slow expansion to a proportional bell. I have a stunning 100 years old Hawkes Eb [non-comp.] that plays better than any other tuba I have played. A true bass nightingale. I dared to make it an alternative 4th valve slide with a dependent 5th valve [being a full BBb 2nd valve length]. So now the ‘brass band’ C# [E] and low F# [A] ring out perfectly. It has a trigger and so one can cover the lower octave chromatically.

RANT WARNING It boils down to taper and bore. Today’s instruments need very hard work not to sound like tapirs and boars. Listen to Dennis Brain. Try to get hold of a good narrow bore small bell instrument with a smallish, sharp-edged mouthpiece. Listen to how refined, intense, effective, silvery, musical - you sound.
Enter a world before the Great Hooting madness, Someone would copy my Hawkes if it were not for the fact that we are all brainwashed into believing that the sound we produce has to be huge, dark, heavy, overpowering. It is a million – no a trillion - times more difficult to be brass player today because the instruments militate against artistry and musicality. END OF RANT.

Thank you. There is absolutely no doubt that all tuba players from now on must wear clothes like these. They should be sold with the instruments and be obligatory. OK - We can allow a different hat for Tuba Xmas.

bloke wrote:

2ba4t wrote:Thank you. There is absolutely no doubt that all tuba players from now on must wear clothes like these. They should be sold with the instruments and be obligatory. OK - We can allow a different hat for Tuba Xmas.

I would direct your attention to the tassel on the hat, sir.
When but a young lad, I wandered into my uncle's bedroom (he: a Shriner - Grand Potentate), picked up his fez, placed it on my head, and went outside. I felt the wind blowing on the tassel, and reached up there and shook the fibers of the tassel myself. I was facing his Mercury Grand Marquis (very large sedan automobile), and - as soon as I touched the tassel - the car was elevated off the ground. I discovered - astonishingly - that I could move the car about - in the air - by directing my eyes in different directions. Soon, I realized that this was too much power/responsibility for a young lad, put the car back down in its original spot, and returned the fez to my uncle's bedroom dresser...

...so I would just caution young tuba players against using hats (included with student tubas) such as these...and - in particular - those made in China (included with tubas) might (??) not (with manufacturing issues, etc.) offer as predictable/controllable consequences.

the elephant wrote:Hmm, I always dress like this. (Except that my Walmart vest is blue and my hat has no tassel but has a New York Mets logo and a bill.) It would be gratifying for me to finally be seen by the world as a man who is fashion forward rather than fashion confused. HAHAHA!!!

Isn't a New York Mets cap the universal sign of being confused on many levels, not just fashion?

And I say this as a lifelong Mets fan....

As a young child I almost starved to death when the plan of not making dinner until Game 6 of the NLCS ended was followed.

I unfortunately was not old enough to be cognizant of that season. As a result, 2000 and 2015 are my only World Series memories....