Plastic tubas read or not. It's just yada, yada...

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flamingo19518
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Plastic tubas read or not. It's just yada, yada...

Post by flamingo19518 »

I don't know if this has been mentioned; nothing come up in 'search.' I was thinking about buying one of the Cool Wind or Tiger tubas, when I made a discovery about the bore size. It is .812 to .835. Knowing from my Yamaha641 (bore size .812,) what the breathing requirements are, I backed off the plastic horns, very quickly. The horn would be flat all they, because my inability to put enough air through. If you have an opinion, I would like to know about it.

Many thanks,

Jim
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oedipoes
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Re: Plastic tubas read or not. It's just yada, yada...

Post by oedipoes »

Let google search it for you on this forum, copy paste this into the google search box:

plastic tuba site:forums.chisham.com
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iiipopes
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Re: Plastic tubas read or not. It's just yada, yada...

Post by iiipopes »

"Air" requirements of an instrument are more a function of the throat and the backbore of the mouthpiece instead of the bore through the valves because the function of the mouthpiece is to take the air stream as modified by the embouchure according to Bernoulli's principal (fluid dynamics) to compressions/rarefactions that we perceive as pitch (static dynamics). There are several compounding factors to this, (called mechanical impedance issues, and other nomenclature) but one of them is "stuffiness," which is usually caused by a misplaced brace or bend that interferes with the nodal patterns of various pitches.

I have also played everything from 3/4 tubas with @.656 bore to the large Yammy copies of the Alex with .812 or larger. Using the same mouthpiece, I perceived very little difference in the amount of air each instrument took, although due to the differences in construction, the "blow" on particular notes could be open or stuffy, in tune or not, depending on the particular instrument.
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Art Hovey
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Re: Plastic tubas read or not. It's just yada, yada...

Post by Art Hovey »

My lung capacity is smaller than average. Over the years I have used small-bore and large-bore tubas. There are certain long passages in the music that I practice which require me to use every bit of my pathetic capacity at moderate volume, and I can play them just as well on my plastic Tiger (0.812") as on my battered old 11J (0.650"). For some music I prefer the sound that I get with a big tuba and for other stuff I prefer the small-bore sound, but my air supply seems to be about the same on either one. Big tubas allow me to use more air when it's called for, while small ones limit me when lots of air is called for.
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iiipopes
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Re: Plastic tubas read or not. It's just yada, yada...

Post by iiipopes »

lost wrote:To present a contrarian view, I played a BBBb subcontrabass tuba using a helleberg as a control and perceived a large difference in amount of air I needed for any given note.

To bring it back to the OP...the small difference in bore may not make a lot of difference, but certainly it makes "some" difference?
I don't think it is bore. I think it is the damped overall response of the tuba from the increased mass of metal required so the horn doesn't collapse on itself.
Jupiter JTU1110, RT-82.
"Real" Conn 36K.
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