Double Tubas!

[joh_tuba]

Dr. Young was an active member of this board at one point and brought a unique and interesting perspective to tuba design. His focus was solving intonation and he wasn't afraid to spend money having tubas built to explore his ideas. Very bright man with a lot of insight into the acoustics of brass instruments. It's really great to see that he's partnered with Gronitz once again and seems to have addressed one of the critiques of his original design(that it was too heavy at 80lbs to be practical).

Unfortunately, I think he wasn't made particularly welcome, or perhaps got tired of defending his assertions:
http://www.chisham.com/tips/bbs/dec2001 ... 79618.html

A discussion of the original design:
http://www.chisham.com/tips/bbs/jan2001 ... 42906.html

I love the idea of filling trumpets with molten lead and dipping them in sulfuric acid so you can get accurate measurements of the internal dimensions... who does that?
http://www.chisham.com/tips/bbs/may2001 ... 56604.html

[eupher61]

The problem with Dr Fred is that he comes off as more obnoxious than Richard Sherman. His TUBAJournal articles in the 80s were so full of self-promoting, pompous arrogance that few wanted to read them, much less pay any attention to them. Maybe he's right, but teaching is not preaching.

[bort]

The problem with his posts is that many of them were all too science-y, and argued to a point that was far beyond his audience here. For the majority of people here, perfect intonation isn't worth all that fuss, and "close enough" is "good enough."

Neat tuba. Not sure that I'd be able to play it any better than another tuba, but it looks neat.

[eupher61]

I think we need more people like Fred to explain things like his tubas and process in designing it - it certainly interests me!

Find the early 80s TUBAJournals with his articles. Maybe 4 of them, or 5. Full of charts and graphs and numbers and formulae andzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Art Hovey]

I'd like to read more about his new double tuba. Dr. Young puts a lot of thought into his designs. Just because some of us don't care to focus on technical stuff does not mean all of us don't.

[Toobist]

Wow.

I'm always amazed at how publicly some of us can insult others on this forum. Can't we just bite our tongues sometimes? Wait... If we started doing that every time we want to be judgmental, overuse this emoticon: (you know who you are) and down-play other people's opinions, personally insult, and generally be unpleasant and anti-community (did I coin that?), we wouldn't have more than half of the posts we do daily! So please! Keep it up! Otherwise all I'd have to read are the seldom-posted USEFUL, informative and community friendly posts.

Please carry on the self-deception that hurtful things and poorly researched 'opinions' are okay to post here; I'm looking for further reason to diminish my confidence in this board.

My point?

When respectable people like Dr. Young and others of his ilk stop posting on this list, the board's usefulness and reliability is lessened greatly. I may agree with the above assertions, but I wouldn't dream of selfishly and short-sightedly commenting publicly on it. How many here have spoken to a respected musician who USED to frequent this board and have stopped due to the general tone having degenerated? At the top of my head I can think of half a dozen of my heroes and colleagues who have scratched this off their list of resources they use and, perhaps more importantly, suggest to their students.

I'm going to start a fresh thread on this subject as the above isn't even a strong example of what I'm talking about... just the last straw before I finally piped up.

[J.c. Sherman]

A growing trend in society, as I witness it, is the preponderance of reactions that learned opinion is either boring or pompous. Dr. Young has both the playing credentials and the scientific background to make his points meritorious to read. We may prefer our own horns, prefer their weight, make them make beautiful music, etc. But, that doesn't make any of Dr. Young's assertions wrong or less advantageous.

I found him both brilliant and fun, with a wealth for good old fashioned conductor stories to make terrific afternoon company. Getting to work on the Gronitz/King was a treat. It works exactly as he promised. Yes, it's only slightly lighter than a Volkswagen... but it has great intonation and sound, and provides a wide array of tuning options for different chords as well. No slide pulling, no stuffiness (no more than a standard King BBb).

Me, I'd shoot puppies to try the F... it sounds fascinating and easy to learn.

BTW: I tried the beast with a Reynolds Dr. Young mouthpiece (a very deep funnel)... and I was frankly stunned that on that contraption, it worked very well.