Why do tubas have a dogleg?

[joh_tuba]

Topic says it all.

It seems to me that it would be VERY easy on most tubas to just pivot the bows a bit differently and remove the need for a dogleg to walk the tubing back into the body after the main slide.

Many but not all euphoniums also have a dog leg. Bessons do... the Miraphone 5000 and Yamaha 642 don't.

It can't be more convenient to manufacture a dogleg. TNFJ ideas why nearly every manufacturer does it anyhow?

[Dan Schultz]

I used to wonder a bit about that too.... until I actually built a few tubas from the ground up. That 'dogleg' makes it a piece of cake to perform alignment on the main tuning slide when mounting the valve section to the body.

Even if the valve section is built in a jig and the body is built in a jig... there are still a few 'variables' that can be dealt with by using the 'dogleg' and some longer or shorter braces.

[Rick Denney]

Also, many manufactures are sharing parts (such as valve sections and tuning crooks) between tubas, taking away some of the design degrees of freedom.

Rick "wondering what hoary old design principles were first caused by a limitation of space around a bending tool at the old factory" Denney