Miraphone 190 Bb

[roweenie]

Ah, now I get it - thanks.

Dare I ask, any particular reason why there are 3 holes?

[TheBerlinerTuba]

That, I do not believe I would not have done - regardless of the amount up confidence (up to "absolutely complete") I had in the craftmanship of the person available to do it.

Resistance is my friend...even (yes) when the resistance involves (per standard) smaller-area-than-an-instrument's defined bore-area pass-throughs (ie. "O" being choked down to "D").

It might (??) be something that (being something that ~I~ own, and not something sitting in a school locker) that ~I~ would like, or it could just as easily not. Regardless, it could not be undone, particularly as Miraphone no longer makes rotors of that bore size on the same blank.

I completely understand. I was somewhat surprised when the owner told me what was done. It's not difficult, but if something does go wrong, it's not easy to rectify. Luckily I have a colleague who is proficient at cutting new rotors if necessary, but best to avoid that if possible...

[TheBerlinerTuba]

IMG_20191115_160054.jpg

We call that work "porting" on automotive engine heads when the intake and exhaust ports are opened up to match that on the manifold or headers. In the American tuba world we usually call this "scooping" (or that is the only way I have heard or read it used over here in the past, despite its not being a very good name).

Ah understood. Some of the workshops here refer to it as "porting" but perhaps there is a better word for it. In german, one simply says "material entfernen oder ausfräsen" basically removing material.

I did this to my Miraphone 180 F tuba and it *really* helped the horn out. I also bumped the leadpipe up to a 183 Eb size relocated the main tuning slide and increased both legs to use 186 slide tubing (@ .769" ID). The horn played very well after that. It lost some of its inherent sweetness but gained so much in trade as to be a non-issue.

Porting those rotors was a very difficult and scary thing for me to attempt, and I did a mediocre job with the mediocre tools I had for the work. (A Dremel tool...!) I liked the changes so much that I nearly purchased a set of new rotors to do it again, but much more carefully and slowly.

Excellent, full respect!

[southtubist]

Here's a video of me playing a Miraphone 190 in CC ages ago. Not sure if there are any other videos of these on youtube, so here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWCFyuSLX2c" target="_blank

It played very well, although the valves were a little sluggish compared to my Alex 163 or Meinl Weston F tuba. I rebuilt the valve linkage in instrument repair class the year before this recording was made. The bottom staff F felt really strange (stuffy?) and sounded wrong under the bell but what I perceived under the bell was not noticeable on recordings. I used a lamp oil as valve lubricant and that seemed to help with the sluggishness. As far as general intonation, I recall that it was pretty point and shoot. The low range was actually much easier than any other 6/4 sized tuba I've played. Never had any issues playing technical stuff, but I generally played F tuba 90% of the time. I only played CC tuba when I was forced to, or when I was in band/orchestra. It's a very large instrument, although it looks normal on me because I'm a pretty big guy.

We found this particular 190 in the back of the instrument storage room at Interlochen. It looked like it hadn't been played in ages. Someone posted in a thread a few years back about the history of that particular instrument. I have no idea if people are still using it- I've kind of fallen out of contact with everyone in the music world since radically changing my career path.