first gig using the 50-year-old (420mm bell/sheet brass) 186

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iiipopes
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Re: first gig using the 50-year-old (420mm bell/sheet brass)

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186!
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Re: first gig using the 50-year-old (420mm bell/sheet brass)

Post by Bill Troiano »

I love my 1965, 186 CC that Lee Stofer restored for me. I can use it for anything and I do, unless I’m playing my CC sousaphone that Lee Stofer also created for me. Here’s to Lee !!!!!

I wish the 186 had a more open low register around Ab and G. It’s work for me to play those notes loudly and with clarity. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I should play around with mouthpieces, but I work around it. Pitch is excellent. I pull the 4th for low Db and I push in the 1st for D in the staff. Otherwise, I don’t really have to move slides. After many years of playing piston CC tubas, the rotaries just feel nice on my wrist and hand. I’m getting old too.

My first CC was a 1972, 186 4U CC. I do love 4 valve tubas. I used that tuba for about 10 years, until I sold it and bought a 188. That 186 was, perhaps, the best tuba I ever owned. What did I know at the time?!

Vintage 186’s are just plain and simply great tubas !!
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Re: first gig using the 50-year-old (420mm bell/sheet brass)

Post by Levaix »

bloke wrote:Playing this tuba "loud" within a "loud" texture can be compared to playing an electric bass with a nice clear/powerful/thoughtfully-set GK bass amplifier, vs. with a big old tube Ampeg amp.

' not throwing a blanket of "rolling thunder" over everything else, but very easy to hear.
]
I've been slightly struggling for an illustration on how I feel about my Sonora and the classic "German sound" in general, and I think this is about as spot on as I'm going to find. There's just a certain richness and "different-ness" compared to my Holton.
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Re: first gig using the 50-year-old (420mm bell/sheet brass)

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SWE wrote:
Levaix wrote:I've been slightly struggling for an illustration on how I feel about my Sonora and the classic "German sound" in general, and I think this is about as spot on as I'm going to find. There's just a certain richness and "different-ness" compared to my Holton.
Is Les Paul vs Strat a fair analogy?
More like Holton roughly analogous to Precision Bass and Sonora roughly analogous to Jazz Bass (neck pickup). The former: big, round, warm; the latter: rich, focused.
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Re: first gig using the 50-year-old (420mm bell/sheet brass)

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bloke wrote:Playing this tuba "loud" within a "loud" texture can be compared to playing an electric bass with a nice clear/powerful/thoughtfully-set GK bass amplifier, vs. with a big old tube Ampeg amp.

' not throwing a blanket of "rolling thunder" over everything else, but very easy to hear.

Image

Image
Twenty-five years ago I had a chance to audition a couple of "classic" GK amp heads of the day. To my ears, at that time gigging and recording regularly and getting all sorts of input on tone from those who could really tell the difference and knew what to tell me to get the tone or tones necessary for the gig or session, and my taking it all in and calibrating my ears accordingly, both near-field and across the venue, the GK heads had great clarity and linearity, but no girth. Loud enough but not foundational.

OTOH, I had owned at the same time (the reason for auditioning the GK's: much lighter for the same "RMS" rated power output) an early '70's Ampeg SVT head that I played through several different cabs. Loud as hell, of course, when you wanted it to be, but could also be tamed, at the expense of a little bit of clarity and a little more grunt: the perfect classic rock stage amp for medium to large venues, as designed by the company and still is.

I sold the SVT head because of two reasons: 1) the weight; and 2) it was going to cost me as much to re-tube it as a new amp cost. So, what did I get? A Carvin PB300, which was sonically about half-way between the two, and included good tone shaping, compression and a "new" feature of the day: the XLR line out, which was very clean and made sound men happy. Epilogue: I still use my Carvin PB300 as my practice hall amp.
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