What is a Good tuba to tryout on for a major orchestra?

[Rick Denney]

how many crappy tubas are ever used to the point where the tuba is what's limiting the player?

The problem with this line of thinking is that it assumes a bowser has a wall beyond which it will limit the player and before which it won't. A bowser isn't that way at all. Bowsers make everything harder, even the easy stuff.

You once told a story of Tony Clements trying out a famous eye-candy tuba, pieces of which are now awaiting rebirth in Baltimore. He declared the tuba unplayable after a few minutes, but your point at the time was that Tony still sounded great on it.

So, Tony was good enough to sound great (according to your ears) on a bowser, but how much better might he have been on a great tuba? Could the bowser have been limiting him in small ways that would impose enough technical requirements to overcome them that it would take the edge off Tony's music-making skills?

The story of Jacobs auditioning well at Curtis with a valve tied down isn't persuasive here. He was 15, and the teachers were able to look past the instrument at the potential of the player. That's not the charge of evaluators for a pro-gig audition. For them, the player's choice of instrument and what he does with it is part of what they are evaluating.

Rick "a dope" Denney

[sc_curtis]

And didn't that happen well before the recent explosion of larger equipment? Miraphone 186s and 188s are great, but can they really keep up with our modern 6/4 horns? The 6/4 size horns are relatively new. Of course, they did exist back then, but not in the abundance we have now sitting in the back of our professional orchestras.

I don't really think this thread is the best thing. If most of us would spend the time practicing on the horns we already have, instead of worrying about equipment, we would all be better.

I am most sure somebody will come on here and totally misread the intent of this. I am not slamming Miraphone, the famous guy that played them, or anything. I also am aware that guys were using larger tubas in some orchestras as well.

[tubatooter1940]

In my younger days a young sax player auditioned for my band. He had a no-name alto sax that looked bad and sounded GREAT when he played it. He told me his horn was bad but he had played only that sax since he was 10 years old.
A friend at rehersal handed the kid a great 60's Selmer Mark 6 and he couldn't get a sound out of it. I hired the guy only after he promised to play on only his crappy sax.

[windshieldbug]

... and from what I've found, really good horns are played to death, not waiting to be "discovered"...