Compensating tubas

[doddyhop]

How do people overcome intonation tendencies with compensating euphonium and British Bass Horns? I sometimes have to pull slides on my front piston tuba.

[Patrase]

The Eb versions generally play very well in tune. Use Alternate fingering for the 5th partial if it is flat. Then just lip notes, but usually not necessary. In the very low register just above the pedal note they can be a little sharp

But these instruments are really designed to play in pairs in a brass band. Because you have a matching pair then the intonation characteristics are the same, so intonation issues are masked because both instruments play the same intonation wise.

Saying that you can try a bunch of mouthpieces to see if they influence any intonation issues you may have.

[b.williams]

How do people overcome intonation tendencies with compensating euphonium and British Bass Horns? I sometimes have to pull slides on my front piston tuba.

Use a few alternate fingerings and practice enough to adjust pitch as required.

[Billy M.]

I don’t believe I’m imagining this:
I believe the newer “improved” larger bell BBb comp. tubas - across the makes and models - offer more troublesome intonation than the 50-year-old Edgware Road manufactured small shank “Besson” instruments - where the only real intonation issue was/is a sharp first valve E-flat in the staff.

I agree with this. Not because you sold me a horn, not because I own one of those 35 year old Eb tubas... but my 15" New Standard from the 60s is really, really easy to play in tune without funky alternate fingers or embouchure adjustments.

[Donn]

This would be a 983, though, wouldn't it?

I sometimes have to pull slides on my front piston tuba.

There's some discussion in the older tubenet archives about pitch and mouthpiece, but what I saw is mostly about playing flat, overall, with the main slide all the way in. So probably not the issue here, but for what it's worth, Patrick Sheridan wrote that the 983 needs "a mouthpiece with a bowl shaped cup, smallish throat and a highly tapered backbore for it to play in tune."

[Wyvern]

In the UK where compensated tubas are usual we learn to lip into tune to correct intonation, rather than slide pull like in the US. When I get a new compensated tuba, I first go through a chromatic scale with tuner and optimize the position of each slide to get the best balance of tuning. So for example one may be 15 cents sharp and another 10 cents flat - so the minimum lipping is required to correct intonation. Then just listen, and play in tune with the ensemble, or piano as appropriate. The tuba is a horn where quite a lot of lipping is possible, and with the generally good intonation tendencies of most compensated tubas, it is not a problem.

[2ba4t]

My 983 from 20 years back needed immediate major surgery to remove about four inches but we always had to do this even on the 'new' 3+1 Bessons also. We took it off the back from the u bend beneath the valves.

Yes, you do need slide pulling because the compensating system works only in a limited way. More than one valve plus the fourth and you are sharp. So 124,234,134 and 1234 are sharper and sharper.

On buying the 983 I immediately, instinctively, had a new narrow mouthpipe made because the sound was unmusically broad. [Of course the 984 did this eventually - to some extent.] The British bass saxhorn world became schizoid in trying to make a CC-sounding EEb. It never worked and we suffer today from the colourless Ebs instruments everyone seems to produce. The bores are all out of proportion and have destroyed the true sound of the old brass band world. [Yes, I know - weep, weep, weep. If the punters buy 'em, we'll make 'em.]

I spent some time trying an 'F' 983, Besson produced as a custom one off. It was a cut down EEb and unplayable by me.

IMHO I think that the new, narrow bore instruments with fast triggers can achieve better tuning, sound, focus and audibility in a tutti. Ebs simply will never sound like a CC 6/4 monster.

[iiipopes]

I don’t believe I’m imagining this:
I believe the newer “improved” larger bell BBb comp. tubas - across the makes and models - offer more troublesome intonation than the 50-year-old Edgware Road manufactured small shank “Besson” instruments - where the only real intonation issue was/is a sharp first valve E-flat in the staff.

I concur, based (pun intended) on the early-70's New Standard BBb 3-valve comp I used to own. The 5th partials were right on (with the "dent" in the knuckle between the primary 1st and 2nd valve ports).