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Lars Trawen · Post by **Lars Trawen** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 1:13 am

About ten years ago the tubist with our local symphony orchestra retired. One of his horns was a Gronitz double tuba, F/BBb. It was for sale and I was interested in buying it and did have discussions with him and with the manufacturer. Of course the user was very satisfied, it was custom built for him. But the maker made a surprising statement, the modern development has made the use of double tubas unnecessary. The double set of tubings did of course also add a lot of weight, it was very heavy.
However, it ended up that I didn't buy it. Now I have a Melton (MW) 200 BBb kaiser tuba, that better suits my needs.
Lars

winston · Post by **winston** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 9:23 pm

Lew · Post by **Lew** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 9:50 pm

And one can argue that a compensating tuba is in fact a double horn. There used to be compensating double French Horns made (are there still?) that were very similar conceptually to compensating tubas. A compensating Eb tuba could be viewed as an Eb/BBb, just as I have seen some people refer to compensating euphoniums as Bb/F instruments.

UDELBR · Post by **UDELBR** » Thu Oct 07, 2004 5:07 am

As Dietrich Kleine-Horst (owner, mind, and muscle behind Gronitz) says, why bother? There's really no advantage in making a Rube Goldberg tuba.

It might be interesting as a curiosity, but it's not practical, and I'd wager you'd sell less than 10 of 'em.

Chuck(G) · Post by **Chuck(G)** » Thu Oct 07, 2004 11:09 am

Well, there's always this beast:

http://www.penn.com/~youngfj/

MaryAnn · Post by **MaryAnn** » Thu Oct 07, 2004 11:34 am

I have a very fine double French horn, and also a fine 3-vavle Bb horn.

I have a performance of Musical Joke (Mozart's) in a couple weeks. I'm using the single Bb horn because of the very fast double tongued passages at the end of the last movement....my top-level pro double horn simply does not respond as quickly as the single Bb horn does, so I'm using the $150 horn instead of the $$$$ horn.

I'm also currently looking into purchasing a 5-valve Bb French horn....a Bb horn with F extension and stopping valve, because I think it might actually work better for me than my double. I'll have to see though, since I play 2nd horn, and my double does do fantastically well in the orchestral application of 2nd horn. A younger, stronger, more high level player would probably not care that much about the difference in response as I do, in the quick high range passages in Musical Joke and similar pieces.

A double instrument and a compensating instrument function pretty much the same, but the double has a separate set of valve slides for each side of the horn; adding extra valves make it possible to extend the range of a single horn, but standard combinations of valves are out of tune compared to a true double. For example, if I put my F extension in service and then push 2nd valve, which is tuned to be in tune for the Bb horn, it will be sharp and I'll have to lip or find alternate fingerings that are closer to being in tune.

MA

W · Post by W » Sat Oct 09, 2004 1:37 pm

Another thing to consider is french horns basically only have one size. We have to worry about the size of the horn and the amount of resonance in the tuba to suit the settings we're playing in. I wouldn't want to hear Die Walkure played on a YFB 621 because it doesn't have the weight like on a 6/4 contrabass horn. Nor hear the Bozza quintet on a MW2265, even though some tuba players swears that it's totally musical to do so.

-W