2014 Ft. Myer Tuba Euphonium Workshop!!!

[WoWwYnAtoR]

2014 Ft. Myer Tuba Euphonium Workshop!!!

I had an absolute blast (pun intended) at the Tuba Euphonium Workshop. Just want to share some of my fun!

***DISCLAIMER***
***THE INFORMATION THAT FOLLOWS IS MY PERSONAL OPINION*** (we all know what opinions are like.)

I started my visit looking for a new mouthpiece. I tested several different options, but I felt like the standouts were the Mike Finn MF 3 and MF 3B as they were not as easy to overblow as most others I tried. Mr. Finn was great to talk to and extremely knowledgable. Even with that being the case, the winner in my mouthpiece trials was the Blokepiece! Mr. Sellmansberger was kind enough to hand me the hand-full of bits and pieces on my list to go and test-out. He was a pleasure to spend some time with and you’d be hard pressed to find a nicer more honest guy. Oh, and his mouthpieces are good too. I tried all kinds of combinations and the winner was: #2 medium narrow rim, on an Orchesteral Grand cup, with an American Symphony shank. There was another tubist who wound up getting the same combination after playing mine!

blokepiece1.jpg

I love my Getzen G-50 and have to say the Stofer Custom CC was a real treat. I found it to blow freely throughout my range and resonate sweetly at any volume. Feeling very familiar probably contributed to my affection for this tuba. Amazing horn, period. I can’t wait for the 5 valve version!
I also tried out the schlipf mute with the Stofer Custom. Although Mr. Stofer had already sold the correct size for the horn, the one available felt so much better (very free blowing and light weight!) than my Silent Brass, I think I need to go ahead and order one

Stofer Custom CC 1.jpg

Hard to see from this picture but there is some beautiful engraving on the bell.


Next up on my list of horns to honk was the Kanstul 4/4 5v CC with the “York alloy bell.” I really like this horn! I thought the resistance (minimal) was very even from top to bottom. Even a little bit easier to pop out those low E’s Eb’s D’s and Db’s than on some other horns. I felt like the warmth of the sound this beautiful tuba put out was absolutely outstanding. My only nit to pick was with reaching the 1st valve slide. I couldn’t reach over the top bow and under the bell like I do on my horn, and going under the top bow and up to the slide bent my wrist weird. I felt like the best way for me to work around this would be to put a ring inside the 1st valve slide crook. Again, that’s just my opinion. The way the bottom was wrapped made this tuba extremely comfortable and stable to hold in my lap. The outside of both tubes on the bottom outside of the tuba were in the perfect spot and both rested on my left leg to produce a rock solid perch.

Kanstul 90 5v CC 1.jpg

Pretty pretty…


...next post = more horns!!!

[WoWwYnAtoR]

And now for the lap-howitzer.

The Big Mouth Brass B.A.T. was tons of fun! I personally would use a short tuba stand (I’m kinda short myself) to help manage this monstrosity, although it wasn’t particularly unwieldy, it was the largest horn I’ve ever played in my life. Even though it was a massive horn, I could still tiptoe around and she was as happy as could be. Where she really came alive was belting out the big stuff! Giving this tuba everything I had was so much fun. She would just take what I gave her and run with it. Fun, fun, FUN!

BMB B A T 1.jpg

Boy oh boy was it hard to (even though this tuba was very affordable lol) walk away from this beautiful beast.


I wandered by MM instruments a few times before I found some space available in the booth to honk on these horns, and for good reason. The little ¾ CC 4v was a sweet little player and was very affordable. I was excited by the 5/4 5v CC! I thought it was a very easy blow and really sang! Solid, round, ubiquitous tuba sound. Really worked well with the Blokepiece. At one point, I was worried about rattling a ceiling tile loose (only half a joke here) and they were nice enough to let me honk on this one outside for a while. I offered them my ID as I would not have felt comfortable walking through the door otherwise. This was the hardest horn to walk away from all day. For as well as it played (for me anyway) and only being about $3k… I really had trouble dragging myself away from this one.

mm tubas 5v CC 1.jpg

And finally, the happiest little honker of all!
I really had some fun with this little friend. I’m not a BBb player by any stretch of the imagination, last playing a sousaphone in 2001. Despite this, I thought the Mighty Midget was all kinds of fun! I walked past the Wessex booth time after time to try this horn and every time, someone was playing it. I had fun with one of the silver rotary tubas and it played well (couldn’t believe the low price!!!), but I don’t personally like rotor valves; however, it did play very well. The Mighty Midget, despite the rotor valve, played very even. Nice, warm, true tuba sound, and very nimble top to bottom. With the Bloke piece set-up I was using, if I pushed her/hard as far as I could, she did get a bit edgy. Switching cups, made it harder to get edgy. I think with the right mouthpiece/setup (I can think of a couple that should be perfect for me) you could do quite a bit with this tuba. It sounded even better outside than in the Elephant room which made me think it would do the same on a stage.

Wessex mighty midget 1.jpg

Thanks again to everyone who came to this event with all the wonderful horns and mouthpieces and everything else tuba! It truly was a treat to be able to play all these amazing horns, find the perfect (for me) mouthpiece, talk to so many fellow tuba players, and talk to the people who make the equipment we play. Everyone was so pleasant and made themselves accessible to us mere mortals. Thanks again to all involved in making this happen for the rest of us.

WoWwY “first tubenet post ever is a two-parter” nAtoR

[Tom Coffey]

Welcome to Tubenet. Thanks for the great review and pictures!

[tylerferris1213]

Were you going to buy the size 6 Schlipf mute?

[WoWwYnAtoR]

@ tylerferris1213

Yes.

I was not able to try the #6 as it had been sold; however, the one available to test was a very close fit. My thinking was if the close fit produce such nice results, the proper fit could only be better. I hardly noticed any weight difference with it in the short bell of the Stofer/Getzen style tubas. I even played a pedal D (all four valves down and a long 1st slide pull, right?) with the mute in, which I’ve not been able to do with the Silent Brass. I also cannot hold the tuba up for very long with the Silent Brass either and the entire time I played with the Schlipf Mute, I only knew it was in because I could barely hear myself (albeit in the pachyderm arena during a rare, relatively, quiet spell) giving it everything. Quality product. I’m just waiting for pay day to place my order. (again: my experience/my opinion)


@ Tom Coffey:

Thank you for the greeting! I had so much fun going around and honking on all those pretty horns! I thought the least I could do was share. There were two horns I failed to get pictures of myself playing that I thought I should mention.

First was the BMB 4/4 5v CC. I thought (for me anyway) it was a little bit more nimble than the BAT because it didn't feel like it needed as much air (possibly psychological due to the size difference) even though the bores are stated to be the same size if I read the spec sheet correctly. Talking to Mr. Barth, I learned quite a bit about his tubas, how/where they are made, the reason for their existence, their history, and the where the tooling originated. I think they were outstanding tubas and Mr. Barth was kind enough to take the time out to tell us all about anything I could think to ask. Very nice, laid-back guy from my brief experience.

Second was the Dillon DCB-1185 5v CC Tuba. Mr. Vance was kind enough to share his personal silver horn and I was blown away with its performance. Immense sound, if you wanted it, with little effort. “Beautiful power” I think is the best phrase to describe the thunderous melodiousness I could produce with even my limited skill. The thing that surprised me was how very soft I could play on it. I could get quite soft without feeling like the horn “fluffed” into silence for lack of a better term. I also thought this was one of the most comfortable tubas to hole regardless of size (for me anyway). Mr. Vance said these horns were extremely consistent from one to the other and several of the ones Dillon has produced played remarkably similar. I would love to own one of these…

[tylerferris1213]

I own a Getzen and I bought that mute. My apologies haha. It is a great mute, though. I was practicing just yesterday into the pedal C and Bb range. These are wonderful mutes!

[bort]

Schlipf mutes are great! The only bad thing is exactly what makes it so good -- it's (nearly) specific to the tuba. Sell the tuba, sell the mute.

[WoWwYnAtoR]

No apologies necessary! It's nice to hear a fellow Getzen owner found the same as I had with the mute. I'll admit I was skeptical before trying it though. I was concerned that if I bought one it would be difficult to sell it if I didn't like it. This is no longer a concern as I do like it and can't wait until I get my own.

[Art Hovey]

At http://www.usarmyband.com/tuba/index.html I found the link to the patron survey which Don P. urged everyone to fill out, but it doesn't work.

Did I wait too long?

[WoWwYnAtoR]

At http://www.usarmyband.com/tuba/index.html I found the link to the patron survey which Don P. urged everyone to fill out, but it doesn't work.

Did I wait too long?

I'm not sure. I tried the link just now and it didn't work for me either. I'm sending an email to SGM Don Palmire as that link did work. I'll let you know what comes of it.

[Michael Bush]

. I was excited by the 5/4 5v CC! I thought it was a very easy blow and really sang! Solid, round, ubiquitous tuba sound

.

There have been a lot of doubts about the scale of this tuba expressed here before. A couple of dealers won't sell it. Without wanting to bring up all that debate I am curious whether you noticed anything squirrelly about its intonation.

[WoWwYnAtoR]

There have been a lot of doubts about the scale of this tuba expressed here before. A couple of dealers won't sell it. Without wanting to bring up all that debate I am curious whether you noticed anything squirrelly about its intonation.

I’m not personally familiar with what you’re referring to (guess I should do some searching), but here’s my experience:

This was the only tuba I actually got out of the “elephant room” with. It was probably between 1530 and 1630 hours, so the sun was getting low and it was starting to get (a little) cold(er) outside. I sat at one of the tables, right outside the door to give the seller a direct line of sight and there was no one else outside when I started. I only mention this to give some perspective to the parameters of my experience with this tuba.

Mr. Bassichis saw me holding my Tyrell book and was even kind enough to bring a music stand out to me. I clipped on my little el cheapo red tuner to the lead-pipe and went to honking out a few of my favorite etudes. I would occasionally hold on a random note and look down at my tuner. The pitch tendencies must be pretty close to my Getzen because the pitch was mostly spot-on with my normal/occasional few cents off here or there I’ve found when playing alone. Not even once did I look at the tuner and think “WTF?”

That was one of the things that excited me about this particular horn. For me, there would be almost no “get-to-know-the-horn” time. I can speak to neither other branded copies (if they exist) of this tuba, nor even other examples of this particular MM-TU 5/4 4500 CC Tuba. http://tubamm.com/tubas.html" target="_blank" target="_blank (scroll down, 8th down in the right column). According to Mr. Bassichis, these horns tend to be pretty consistent and he personally play-tests each one that comes in and it must meet his approval before it can be sold. He also said this is the horn (one of them maybe?) he has chosen to play.

What I can tell you for certain, is that I’m working my chops back up to audition for the local county orchestra (local competition is pretty stiff around here) and if I find I need more horn than my Getzen G-50, this will most likely be the horn I buy to supplement my only current tuba.

WoWwY “giving my honest opinion (for what it’s worth)” nAtoR

[Michael Bush]

I’m not personally familiar with what you’re referring to (guess I should do some searching), but here’s my experience:

Very interesting. Thanks for telling about your experience with it.

Here is a thread that was about some of the problems. The poster edited out a lot of the process, but what remains gives some idea at least of why it is not in his catalogue:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=47882&p=417188&hili ... ut#p417188

Here is another thread, but the signal to noise ratio is on the low side: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=44077&hilit=JinBao+ ... 60#p443781

[WoWwYnAtoR]

Thanks talleyrand! I was having trouble finding that.

Ok, I know these pictures are taken from different angles and the scale of the photos is slightly different; however, the difference in the slide lengths jumped out at me even before I zoomed in on them and marked them. It would appear to me, based on my observations of the pictures below that the 3rd slide is indeed shorter, and the 1st slide looks like it has been slightly changed as well. Maybe someone more skilled in perspectives, geometry, and or engineering may be able to refute this, but it looks to me to be as I observed.

Not MM Tuba 1st and 3rd slide.jpg

mm tubas 5v CC 1st and 3rd slide.jpg

The 3rd slide shortening was the only unedited observation of this tuba from the above linked thread. I’d have to say, if that was indeed what was done, I think it worked.

I can post the un marked originals if needed.

[Michael Bush]

Interesting. Thanks!

[Wyvern]

It is quite possible the 5/4 CC has been improved. Wessex now has much improved 6-valve F tuba - So quite possible M&M now has improved CC. The production manager is very open to constructive feedback and JinBao are really working at improving their products.

[WoWwYnAtoR]

Good to know Neptune! I can only hope these tubas remain affordable.