That 6th Valve I Added to My F Tuba…

[the elephant]

It has changed my life now that I can functionally READ with it. Everything is better. Mainly the response is greatly improved, but intonation is also so much less work.

Playing quick stuff down around the open pedal F (nipping both above and below it in some licks) is better because…

1. I can play F with all six valves down and it sounds and responds just the same as the notes immediately above it. Pedal notes are very similar in feel and tone, with only the OPEN pedal F being the issue. On my horn, as with many very good F tubas, that F is both a tad sharp and a bit on the rude side. It wants to LEAP out of the horn with a very OPEN sound that is nothing at all like the Gb above it. Now I can play those runs in the RVW effortlessly, with no worries about smoothing out the transitions from open F to 12345 Gb—it just comes out. The F 123456 is in tune, blows easily, and (importantly) the resistance matches the low Gb perfectly.

2. The longer 6th has also a larger bore than the 2nd it replaces. (.707" versus .769") Everything in the low register is using the larger valves, so as Joe likes to describe it, using 5 and 6 is less like "corrected" 1st and 2nd valves in F, and much more like normal 1st and 2nd valves in C, and this huge Kurath (the immediate predecessor of the original Willson 3200-FA5) makes a pretty decent 3/4 CC tuba. So, approaching 5 and 6 as if the tuba was a small CC is possible. Just play. No worries about the stinky low notes endemic to so many F tubas.

3. This works because it is, first and foremost, a large bass tuba with a bore ± 18 mm (.708"). I have always believed that these tubas suited me more than the various copies, which do not work for me because an F tuba with a 19mm bore starts to sound horsey, regardless of how nice it may "feel". So many people bought those horns, and then so many sold them. I think that this is part of the reason why that happened, even if it is not realized by the buyer-then-seller. The bore is too large for the bugle, IMHO. The Willi Kurath-made F tubas are also too big, however the player can get away with an awful lot more if you have one that plays well in tune. It is a little drier, a little more focused… again, IMHO. The "F valves" are more F-like (meaning smaller), allowing the "CC valves" to be more CC-like, greatly opening up the low range while not affecting the upper range.

4. Not having to treat the low range with kid gloves as you transition from in and out of it, not having to move slides, and not having to be distracted by the tuba itself, makes everything easier and more stable.

5. Setting up the 5th and 6th valves to serve as the 1st and 2nd of a CC tuba makes all this work seamlessly for me. I have had limited experiences with 6-valved F tubas, and all of them have been negative. My general impression was that the 6th had been added to models that were desperately in need of all the alternates an additional valve offered. Having the traditional German setup of a flat whole step 5th as LH middle finger and flat half step 6th as LH index finger never made sense to me, but reversing them works brilliantly. Altering the mindset from them being corrected replacements for 1st and 2nd to them being 1st and 2nd of a CC tuba put the last puzzle piece in place for me.

I love this system so much that I am currently adding a 6th to my Holton 345 for fun. I imagine the benefits will be the same.

We need to stop thinking of the 6th and 5th valves as intonation correctors. We need to think like a trombonist and see them as long positions when the Bb horn is put into the key of F. It is much easier to abandon the idea that these are there to fix math errors in the low range and abandon the F tuba altogether down there. Think of it as a CC tuba; It is much easier to bend your brain around a good, small CC tuba than the morass of the F tuba's extreme low range.

Just my 2¢…

This is tricky on a 5-valved F (playing low F open) at 144 or faster. It's a cinch on a 6-valved horn, though. There are so many places in the lit where this sort of issue crops up, and with a 6-banger it just isn't a problem. The 6th valve is not just a means to get more alternate fingerings; it adds a lot of facility and ease to the low register.

[bloke]

' glad for you. !!! (and yes to all)


As I've expressed before...
The F cimbasso is 5 + a second slide trigger (a trigger which is quite effortless, as - unlike many others - it's right where I hold onto the instrument)...

...but - when I play stuff that's low on it - I still have to reprogram my brain for the 5-valve system, because its not something I had ever done (ok...back when I BORROWED an F tuba for a few weeks, before I bought one over four decades ago, but...) prior to building the cimbasso.

Having built it (and with the trigger where is it is) I now accept it as a viable system.
The Rudy 5/4 5-rotor C that I had for a few years ago...It had the 2nd slide trigger, but I had to take my left hand off the 1st slide to utilize it...as Wade might say: "no likey"

...and - typical of a cobbler's own shoes - I've never spent the 20 minutes required to get rid of the elastic "helper" return spring and replace it with a REAL steel spring...I never even finished buffing and lacquering parts of it...

...also notice that I set up the #1 slide for a trigger (3mm threads, etc.), but - once the instrument was put together - I discovered (as with the B&S F tuba) that I didn't need one.

duh: The triggered 2nd slide is the same as a 6th, BUT...There's no ability to activate BOTH #2 AND #6.

and/but: As 5+trigger is "good enough" to play this chart in tune with this particular instrument, it's "good enough":







question for @the elephant:
Have you tried 2-3-6 for C?
If so, how are the intonation and response, compared to 4 ?