The Fletcher cut: details requested

[toeter]

Hi all you Tubenetters,

I have a technical question I hope this community can answer: recently I bought a Boosey and Hawkes Imperial EEb tuba. A nice one, 19" bell, so I guess it's built around 1979. It has the original small receiver.
However, it appears to be quite flat. No real surprise taking into account what I had read on this form about the 19-inchers. So now I guess it's time for The Fletcher Cut. I already saw some info about this on various topics, but I couldn't find exact measures of how much should be cut off the back bow. Can anybody help me out here? My repairman has no experience in this particular surgery, so an exact description with measurements would be appreciated.

Apart from this, I found two more issues, I'm interested if others also have the same experience with these instruments:
-the 4th valve appears to be a bit too long / flat. Also, combinations like (especially) 1-2-4 are quite flat.
-the 6th and 8th partials are very flat. This is regardless of which mouthpiece I use.

Mouthpieces I'm currently trying are Denis Wick 1 & 3 (modern type) and an old very shallow unmarked one which I happened to have at home. Here also, recommendations are appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

(And in case people would like to see some (rather shocking) before and after-cleaning pics, let me know, I'll upload if I have acces to my laptop)

[imperialbari]

The workshop originally doing this cut may still have the information:

http://www.philparker.biz/catalog/index.php

I will not recommend the cut, neither will I discourage it. Only I will say that the combination of any give instrument and any given player will come out individually, so the length of the cut necessary will also vary.

And then I strongly recommend that you do not cut anything until your playing on this instrument has settled. My suspicion is that this is not yet the case. Your experience of the 8th partial tending flat may be congruent with general experiences, but the 6th rather will tend sharp as will the low G (1+2+4).

Klaus

[ken k]

here is a pic of my horn and where it was cut. The bottom loop on the back is taken out and shortened then reinstalled, some expanding of the tubing is needed. I would not take much off at first and have it put back to gether and try it. You can always take it back and have a little more taken off. you can't put anymore back on.

ken k

[J.c. Sherman]

I have an Imperial as well...

If you are using a regular shank mouthpiece dangling from the small receiver, don't cut it. Order the mouthpiece receiver for the Yamaha YEP-321 and exchange them. Or have your mouthpiece changed to a small shank.

Mine has never been flat, though when I overhauled it years ago, I cut a bit off the 4th slide; wasn't necessary, but I liked having a little room.

Be really careful about cutting; you can't add the plumbing back. Make sure you're playing it like a bass tuba, and that you're not lipping it (sometimes you can feel like you're lipping a pitch up, when you're really slowing the air down and bringing the pitch down with the "tighter" lips). These weren't built by hacks; they are AMAZING, flexible tubas. They can do ANYTHING, so make sure you've made sure:

-The valve porting is dead on
-The leadpipe is installed correctly (all the way abutting the valve section)
-The outside bow can't have any dents on these; it throws the pitch completely to hell.
-You probably need to pull out the 3rd compensating slide quite a way out; that will keep you from adjusting your scale around a faulty low F.
-These play very open, so make sure you're not adjusting your wind speed down thinking you're playing a "little" tuba... you'll go flat every time.
-Don't use a large mouthpiece. A Miraphone C4 is nice and shallow and works great (these were designed 80+ years ago, so they were made for a much smaller mouthpiece), but for more broadness, try a Yamaha Self. But, beware the Selfwill bring your top end flat very slightly and you will need to compensate for that.
- High D = 1&2, High Eb =1, High E = 2, High F = Open. Again, adjusting your whole scale can make other pitches come back to center.

In the end, just be careful. If you have an older one of these with the low-pitch, long loop slide, all of this is moot and you should chop the main slide as they are notoriously flat. Otherwise, make deadly sure before you make the Fletch mods (Back-bow cut, et. al.)

FWIW

J.c.S.

[AndyCat]

Mine's not cut, I use a small shank MF4 in it and it's as near in tune as anything else I own.

[Dan Schultz]

Mine's not cut, I use a small shank MF4 in it and it's as near in tune as anything else I own.

Andy... do you guys tune to A=440? ... or a little higher?

[AndyCat]

Mine's not cut, I use a small shank MF4 in it and it's as near in tune as anything else I own.

Andy... do you guys tune to A=440? ... or a little higher?

Depends. Usually 440, but some brass bands go 442

[iiipopes]

OK, a little bit of clarification is needed. The OP is talking about a 1st run 19 inch bell. Everybody else is talking about tubas that are newer. Besson did actually "fix" this problem on the second run of Sovs. The others, both older with the smaller bells and newer with the 19 inch bells, really never had these problems, except on a horn-by-horn basis as imperialbari points out.

This horn does need the cut. But whatever it needs, like above, cut less than you think it needs, and go back and cut more later if necessary.

[toeter]

Hi All,

Maybe I should explain, I'm a professional musician and I make a living as a tubist. In daily life, I play a lot of bass and contrabass tuba, so I think the intonation issue is not due to an un-tubalike way of playing the instrument. Even with a very very shallow mouthpiece (the shallowest I've ever seen) A=440 is almost impossible to reach. I am using only small shank mouthpieces, so that's not causing the problem. Valve porting is checked by my repairman as is the leadpipe. I think that with the supershallow mouthpiece I'm playing around A=437 if I don't push.
In the meantime, I've found a collegue tubist here who also does instrument repair and maintenance. He has experience cutting Imperials/New Standards that were too low, and he says on average he had to cut about two and a half cm / 1 inch off the back bow.
Cutting the main slide is not an option since one of the legs already is no longer than 5 cm / 2 inches.

@ken k: what does the arrow pointing at the bottom of the back bow mean?
@JcS: do you have the Yamaha receiver and a large stem mouthiece on your Imp? Do you like it? And what do you meand by "the faulty low F"? Concert Ab or 1-3-4 concert F? And how much did you take off the 4th slide?
@kiltietuba: that would give your mouthpiece a 10 mm bore or so??? I probably misunderstand, but this way it sounds like rubbish to me

Thanks for all your help!

EDIT
@iiipopes: a-ha! Thanks for clarifying!

[ken k]

Hi All,

Maybe I should explain, I'm a professional musician and I make a living as a tubist. In daily life, I play a lot of bass and contrabass tuba, so I think the intonation issue is not due to an un-tubalike way of playing the instrument. Even with a very very shallow mouthpiece (the shallowest I've ever seen) A=440 is almost impossible to reach. I am using only small shank mouthpieces, so that's not causing the problem. Valve porting is checked by my repairman as is the leadpipe. I think that with the supershallow mouthpiece I'm playing around A=437 if I don't push.
In the meantime, I've found a collegue tubist here who also does instrument repair and maintenance. He has experience cutting Imperials/New Standards that were too low, and he says on average he had to cut about two and a half cm / 1 inch off the back bow.
Cutting the main slide is not an option since one of the legs already is no longer than 5 cm / 2 inches.

@ken k: what does the arrow pointing at the bottom of the back bow mean?
@JcS: do you have the Yamaha receiver and a large stem mouthiece on your Imp? Do you like it? And what do you meand by "the faulty low F"? Concert Ab or 1-3-4 concert F? And how much did you take off the 4th slide?
@kiltietuba: that would give your mouthpiece a 10 mm bore or so??? I probably misunderstand, but this way it sounds like rubbish to me

Thanks for all your help!

EDIT
@iiipopes: a-ha! Thanks for clarifying!

Hi toeter, the arrow at the bottom of the bow simply is showing which bow was altered and pushed in. I originally had the small receiver/leadpipe on my B&H and later had a Besson 981 leadpipe installed and a Dillon Adjustable Gap Receiver put on as the reciever, not so much because I wanted the AGR but just because one was readily available to me at the time. So rather than buying a Besson or yamaha reciever, I used the AGR. Replacing the original, higher and narrower, leadpipe with the 981 leadpipe did enhance the low range response and seemed to help the upper range as well. I also had the leadpipe mounted off of the bell rather than being soldered directly to the bell, as it was originally, and it improved the resonance of the bell as well.

ken k

[J.c. Sherman]

Ken K said: "@JcS: do you have the Yamaha receiver and a large stem mouthpiece on your Imp? Do you like it? And what do you mean by "the faulty low F"? Concert Ab or 1-3-4 concert F? And how much did you take off the 4th slide?

I'm wondering a little bit now if the first Sovereigns were marked "Imperial".

On my instrument, the 3rd valve comp slide is pretty sharp - I have it pulled out to about 5-8mm remaining in the horn. That pulls down the low F it right on the money, and makes low E very reachable. I also sometime "palm" the 2nd valve slide for C and Gs... sometimes. And sometimes on the low E to make it balls-on.

I never had much of a fuss about the original receiver, except that it wasn't allowing me to easily try other mouthpieces. Now, I can still play a Miraphone TU23 (with a full-size receive) and now try out others, though with the Self I think I'm done now. The Yammy receiver fit like a glove. Perfect fit.

But I didn’t have to do any of it. But as time has gone on and I’ve played the thing for 23 years as my primary instrument, I’ve made minor changes to make it a little better for me.

I removed about 12mm from each side of my 4th valve tuning slide (about 1 inch total) but not from the slide itself; I removed it from the tubing going into the slide, so it looks really nice. I have it pulled out now about 2mm.

J.c.S.

[Bob Kolada]

That pulls down the low F it right on the money, and makes low E very reachable.

How is low Gb?

[J.c. Sherman]

Low Gb has always been "uneventful"

J.c.S.

[imperialbari]

Ken's shortening places appear the most logical to me - if an English Eb tuba truly is too long.

I don't know if Ken's cut is truly the "Fletcher" cut. Perhaps (??) its the Roffler cut...??

DO NOT CLICK ! http://www.topbanana.us/roffler_sculpture_kut.htm

Stepping away once again non sequiturs and nonsense, I believe I would specifically cut from the sides of the ferrules indicated by the blue circles.

I don’t have an old 15" Eb at hand, so my comments basically are old TubeNet wisdom:

bloke’s blue rings represent a general logic in cutting, where too narrow ends are expanded, which is easier than shrinking too wide ends.

The red arrows represent old Besson logic, where the production line should deliver high and low pitch instruments with a majority of parts being identical. The lower inner back bow was where the pitch difference was achieved in the main bugle. The ends of that bow simply were cylindrical additions on the low pitch version. Hence the Phil Parker workshop did the original cut there.

Klaus

[Bob Kolada]

Really, just like the 3rd valve on a 3 valve Bb tuba the comp 3rd loop on a 3+1 comp Eb should be long enough for 234 combos. 134 and 1234 will be sharp, but I would rather a kicker of some sort over tuning 234 Gb FLAT to make 134 F and 1234 E slightly less sharp.

[J.c. Sherman]

Low Gb has always been "uneventful"

J.c.S.

He says again