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Question to all of the horn tinkerers:
How feasible would it be to take one of those old Reynolds Eb tubas with the tall bell stacks like the ones depicted here: http://contemporacorner.com/other/lowbrass/" target="_blank" target="_blank, outfit it with a much shorter bell, and cut the slides to try and create an F tuba? Furthermore, If the bell collar were kept in tact, one could also theoretically keep the original tall bell and fabricate an additional tuning slide to convert it back to Eb, no?
Thoughts, opinions?

The really tall Eb..not too hard. It may or may not come out as a good instrument, though.

You would need to lose 12" to put it in F - I don't think you'll accomplish that with just the bell change. You might be able to lose a few inches off of each side of the MTS, but IDK if that still would not be enough - you might have to cut branches to achieve this.

And then, after all that, you'd have a 3 valve F tuba.

If it is that Model 180

http://contemporacorner.com/wp-content/ ... low180.jpg


If you had a bell that was right above the top bow, you'd probably already around E. There is some space in the main slide and above the sliding part on both sides, but to make it more than 3 valves, you'd probably want a King valveset and to take that leadpipe and re-bend or just get a new one. After that, you would probably be very close if not to F, but then you could start trimming around the ferrules very conservatively.