Thumb ring or hand rest ?? Pics at last.

[tubeast]

Inspired by the recent "Willson Tuba Thread":

Ergonomics of the right hand are a big issue in tuba design, especially when a thumb-operated 5th valve is involved.
I have found the usual setup (adjustable thumb ring) to be quite awkward.
Reason: on 4-valved tubas, the thumb ring serves as a fixed pointof reference to all fingers used on the valves.
The thumb should not move and serve as pivot- or reference point to the whole hand.
On 5-valved (as opposed to 4+1) horns the situation is different:
ALL 5 fingers should operate valve paddles, making NONE of those five suitable as a point of reference.
What works better for me: A palm rest. That´s a surface to rest my right palm against (I´m in lack of the correct term: I´m referring to the part of my palm that borders to the wrist joint), serving as a pivot point for my hand.
Thus, all bones in my palm are free to adjust to the positions the valve paddles may require. All I need is a fixed point of leveradge.
Do You think this makes sense ?

[tubeast]

Well, MINE wasn´t exactly made of junk box parts: I used a piece of snake wood , carved it to the desired shape and glued it to the 3rd valve slide of my horn. This is the suitable material for the task, because it´s rare on the market of tropical woods.

[imperialbari]

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If one isn’t near a high end repairman, which I am not, I think inventiveness is allowed for. If I should prototype such hand rest, I might find an old drumstick, adjust the length, and mount it with duct tape. I might use plastic or styrofoam blocks to adjust the height. If the stick was too slim, i might pull a piece of a 3/4" hose over it.

Klaus

[Bob Kolada]

My question to the contributors is If you had a blank slate what would you design for a valve set ?

I would go to the slightly angled valve set shown on the King 2341 and to a slightly lesser extent on the Miraphone 1291. I find both to be quite comfortable. FWIW, although I think the 5XJ's are fine horns, the valve sets are low enough in the horn to not be as comfortable (surely this info is useful to all the 7' tuba players out there ).

[Tuba Guy]

My question to the contributors is If you had a blank slate what would you design for a valve set ?

I'd be interested in a valve set that was toward the bottom of the horn. It would allow for your arms to be at a more relaxed angle (down, as opposed to up), which I think would be a lot more comfortable.

[iiipopes]

Handrest. Hmm. Isn't this why M-W runs the 3rd valve circuit on its standard valve block (MW25 being a prominent example, although 4-valve) as they do?

[tubeast]

Hi, I hope this´ll work out all right.
Here You can see me holding my horn, a WILLSON 6400 RZ5.

That´s the playing position of my hand:

The part of my palm where the fingers are attached rests lightly against the hand rest.
This is a closeup of the parts I made:

Note the thumb rest: It´s stuck on a pin, where there used to be a metal saddle ON TOP of it. That was awkward to set my thumb on, for sure.
When I got it, the horn probably had been designed to be held with my arm perpendicular to the 3rd valve slide. No chance to use 5th valve otherwise.
Now it´s pretty comfortable toapproach the valves from below.

[ZNC Dandy]

Very cool! Thanks for sharing. That is a beautiful tuba!

[Wyvern]

That looks very comfortable Hans! I will be interested to try if you make it over

[tubademon999]

You did a great job on that. It looks superb.

[pierso20]

That is quite cool.

THOUGH...

I play without any thumb ring or rest. I find that any un-wanted pressure on the hand can really affect your playing as well as (possibly) be damaging to the hand. Especially if you are prone to anything with nerve problems.

I think a thumb REST is by FAR better than a ring. I make my students take them off. MAKE them.

Once they do it, they can NEVER go back...too weird.

[Rick Denney]

I'd go back to the slant-piston set-up (old B&M, York Master, Conn, etc.) which is so comfortable and get away from the arcane "because it's like the CSO York" vertical piston set-up which has been duplicated now thousands of times.

The angle of the valves fully depends on the position of the elbow, which, in turn depends on the height and shape of the player. The higher the elbow with respect to the valves, the more vertical the valves need to be, all else being equal (and one point of non-equality would be the angle of the instrument).

With my York Master, my elbow was too high, and my pinky finger would rest on the edge of the cap rather than on its surface. Another member of this forum had a need to carve brass and made an extension for me so that my finger could push the valve straight in. I do not have small hands, by the way. I wear gloves in the XXL or XXXL size and I'm the only white guy I know that can palm a basketball.

The vertical arrangement on my other instruments is more comfortable. Even the Holton is more comfortable in that regard.

The problem with the Holton is that it is front-heavy, and wants to fall forward when resting on a stand. This is partly the result of Holton's easy-way-out practice of avoiding the challenge of nestling the valve body into the instrument. But that is what it is, for those who don't want to re-engineer the instrument. I keep the instrument upright with my left hand to avoid having to do it with my thumb, but that means that when I adjust a slide I'm pulling it sideways as I move it. A hand-rest on an inner bow to allow my left hand to hold the instrument upright without depending on the fingers to do so might be a solution, but it hasn't been a big enough problem to force me to deal with it.

A bar for the right hand as pictured on Joe's helicon wouldn't do it for me. Those sorts of arrangements have always annoyed me on tubas that use them. I actually like having a thumb ring, and having an opposing thumb to use as a pivot point is what separates primates from other mammals. The calluses on my thumb are testamant to the work the thumb is able to do when holding the instrument.

The pictured handrest would also not do it for me. I want to be able to manage the instrument, and that imposes the requirement to be able to pull as well as push with the fingers still on the valves. If I move my left hand to do any necessary thing, I don't want the instrument falling away from my right hand. The muscle that pulls the thumb into the center of the hand is in the palm, while the muscles that acuate the fingers are in the forearm. I don't find that one impedes the others.

And for the teacher who demands that his students remove their thumb rings, what do you propose as an alternative? It seems to me that they will be forced to manage the instrument entirely with their left hand. I hope they keep up with their left arm biceps curls as they get older. And when they learn to play a six-valve F tuba, or obtain an instrument that has the sound they want but that requires a slide adjustment here and there, they will want the use of their left hand for other things.

What have we learned? Everyone is different, which means there will be no single solution. To fulfill the requirements of individual players, some adjustability should be built into the instrument. That means a movable thumb ring (moveable in three axes), a rest for the left hand, and (at least) some concern for balance.

The utter lack of regard for the relationship to the lap makes no sense to me. Bass clarinets have adjustable pin rests, bassoons use an adjustable seat strap, bari saxes use an adjustable neck strap, and all to keep the player from having to manage the weight of the instrument with their arms or in an unbalanced state.

Martin provided some adjustment for the dimensions of the player by providing locking bits in the leadpipe. This allows the mouthpiece to be adjusted laterally and also allows the angle to be adjusted. I don't know why it never caught on, but it's a good system.

I don't know why tubas aren't equipped with a pin rest arrangement. Most Bb tubas place the mouthpiece at mid-forehead on me when I hold them in my lap. I've done more damage to tubas resting them on chairs than anything else. There are stands of all sorts, and maybe that would be better than any pin rest--I certainly use a stand. But even designing the instrument for use on a chair or a stand would suggest distributing its weight so that it can actually balance when resting on the low point of the bottom bow.

Resting on the edge of the wrist, though, seems to me a sure-fire opportunity to develop carpal tunnel problems.

Rick "thinking adjustability is the answer" Denney