This includes some enhancements including lowered 5th valve lever to be more comfortable for myself, lengthened main tuning slide as the one on my old instrument was always fully out, detachable leadpipe with second one to vary the sound and hand engraving on the bell.
My special gold brass tuba was ordered June 2006 and has just arrived - it was worth the wait!
With the standard leadpipe its sound is noticeably warmer and darker and somehow more refined than the yellow brass version and also it seems to require less effort to play.
With the second leadpipe, the sound is brighter and a bit coarser which makes me think that will work best for outdoor playing.
The standard 2040/5 is a great tuba, but my new gold brass one is something really special - a quite unique EEb tuba.
It also just happens that I have also just taken delivery of a new B&S PT-20 4/4 CC (right in the photo above). Some of you may know that through a shoulder injury I had to part with my Besson 981 EEb last December as it was just no longer comfortable to hold and was exasperating my injury. That left me with quite a large tonal gap between my Melton EEb with its more F tuba like sound and my massive 6/4 Neptune. I therefore decided I needed a 4/4 CC to fill the gap. I had previously tried the Miraphone 188 and decided that the Miraphone sound was not for me. So after some consideration I thought the B&S 4097 PT-20 might be just right. Mark at Mr.Tuba therefore got me one from Germany on approval. It was selected as the best of a batch of half dozen just produced by no less than Robert Tucci who happened to be at the B&S factory at the time.
The PT-20 has proved to be just what I was looking for - a tone not that much different from my old 981, but with much greater weight and more open in the lower register. Apart from brass band use, I think it will be ideal for everything I previously used the 981. It has just played its first concert of Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony where it really sang in the solo passages.
I now feel I am fully set up with just the tubas for me to fulfil all my playing requirements!
