I posted these over a week ago under a different thread, but I thought many of you would be interested in seeing them. These are pictures of an older Cerveny Harmonia 6 valve F tuba with the thumb actuated Quint valve.
The second picture shows the wrap of the 4th valve and the quint valve, the quint tubing is colied over itself. The left hand 5th valve is a flat half-step. The bore is around .718 for valves 1-5, but the quint valve (a perfect 5th) is located past the tuning slide and is about a .835. This tuba gives the best of both worlds, a sweet lyrical 4/4 rotary F tuba sound with an open and full low range often found only on some of those CC'ish 6/4 F's or the more vanilla timbre yamahas. Not having played F for several years, my first week on it saw notes below the staff sharp and notes above the staff flat. Once everything "clicked" and I learned to approach the horn with the finesse it deserves, every single note on it has been tunable with no slide pulling or excessive lipping. I am primarily using a C shaped Rudy Meinl RM-9 and occassionally a funnel shaped UMI-2 (new version of Conn2, similar to Helleberg 7B) for a different timbre. Anything deeper and the sound loses its character and the pitch is less focused. Thanks again to Lee Stofer for selling and tweaking the horn.
Last edited by MartyNeilan on Thu Jan 26, 2006 9:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
uh, I just bought it, sorry if I somehow insinuated it was for sale. In the very unlikely event I ever win a job in a top orchestra and need a bigger F tuba to keep up with the likes of a Charlie Vernon-ish monster sitting next to me, then I may consider selling it towards a 6/4 F.
I just posted the pics since both Cerveny F's and quint valves are relatively uncommon, I figured it might be of interest to tubenetters.
(Plus, I am bored working on study sheets for my first summer session finals and waiting for kid #2 to pop out. Already got in my 3 hours for today and I don't think anyone wants to hear tuba at 1 am)
