bloke wrote:... I wonder if lengthening some of those old Eb tubas to D (rather than considering "cuttin' 'em to F, which - when attempted - always seems to end up as even a worse intonation disaster) would produce a more in-tune instrument? Many of those instruments were originally built below A=440 anyway...
... it is not within the realm of practicality to lengthen an Eb instrument to CC...at least not without throwing away most of the bugle and replacing it with a "cut-down" BBb bugle...and that's not at all the sentiment of this post/thread. The concept is to (perhaps...??) only lengthen all of the valve slides and main slide to end up with a "D" instrument, and ending up with an old large-bell instrument that is much more consistent.
... I can't help but wonder, though, if some of those more "blossomy" very old Eb tubas (various makes) could, somehow, be "rethought" ("cylindricized" just a bit - down to D) with the hopeful result being easier intonation.
Not dumb at all -- makes a lot of sense. If the valve slides are long enough, you might be able to lengthen the main slide (or make an extender for it) and just pull the valve slides enough to adjust ... in fact, if it's a low-pitch horn, you might be able to pull all the slides enough to make it work. I'll be very interested to hear how this turns out!
"Don't take life so serious, son. It ain't nohow permanent." -- Pogo (via Walt Kelly)
I don't know if the world is ready for a DD tuba yet, Bloke.
But seriously, it sounds like a great idea if you have a bunch of tubas, but where would you fit it into your normal big contrabass/smaller bass tuba scheme? It seems like D would be an impractical key for an all-around horn, but I don't think it would be enough of a difference from either a bass or contrabass horn to make it a SECOND horn...
Charlie "basically wondering if he'll now have lugging THREE horns into his normal gig in his hopefully-performing future" Goodman
