I made a bicycle trailer out of ABS back in the '80s. At the time, the solvent cement normally prescribed for use with ABS plumbing was perfectly effective. Those are sleeved joints where there's a lot of bonded surface, but it's a solvent welded bond so should be about as good as you get. There ...

Right now I play on a Miraphone 497 Hagen (6/4 BBb), but find it a bit to large for me. In what way? physically uncomfortable while playing? ... while transporting to and from? hard to play some parts of the range? ... everywhere in the range? ... to get the sound you want? ...? My 2nd tuba, the ...

I was worried about the leanness of the F tone outside, but I will be micced. Well, I played the outdoor program, and the little F — which sounded fine in the rehearsal hall with a real acoustic envelope to play into — sucked in the Great Outdoors. It is just too skinny to be audible in any mea ...

Needs to be Eb instead, then all would be OK.

According to the Watelle method (1913) it's not the size but the number of valves making the difference (for both C and Bb): three valves=saxhorn tenor four valves=saxhorn bariton five valves=saxhorn basse six valves=tuba Though I guess we may not take this too seriously, as on the last count (six ...

The French tuba is of course a saxhorn despite what others might say. It is a "saxhorn basse en Ut" in fact. I agree technically, but it's special with the much wider tubing. I never found this on any four or five valve saxhorn. And the French people add some confusion to the nomenclature in ...

In that recording Roland plays his ca 1910 Sax (junior) Bb saxhorn bariton (3+1 valves). Nice playing instrument, I tried it once. The French C tuba derives from the saxhorns, but is more conical after the valves than the saxhorns, so it's a bit different to play with a stronger low register. Ah ...

Roland Szentpali has an old video on youtube of this solo, and of course sounding perfect on a saxhorn. I guess that should be acoustically similar, just fewer valves, but to my eye this Wessex seems to have a fatter bell.

So the wrap up I'm getting here is, if you want a rotary valve tuba kind of along the lines of the York clones, let's think about grafting another piston valve set onto one? Whoopee! Rotary valves go home!

Big bell, big bell flare, American vs. German, that's my guess. I haven't the faintest idea myself, but note that the ad copy for the MRP claims a German sound.

I look forward to reading about it from more informed persons, but one thing even I know - silver plate doesn't normally apply directly to the brass mouthpiece stock, there's a copper "flash" (thin) plate first. That wears off instantly once the silver is gone, so for a good re-plate, you'd have to ...

It's news to me, too - but my Wick mouthpieces with the early plating wear were silver plated. Maybe it just seems like the gold has no silver under, because their silver is so thin. Again that was decades ago, different ownership etc.

My Wick 5 alternated between coral lips, and blue. I learned to appreciate the skill of fingernail polish experts, as my freehand results were not so good. The best for me was to apply a ring shaped puddle on some waste plastic or something, and dip the rim.

I liked the Wick 5 I had. I appreciate that they make a little broader range of cup sizes that still manage to be real tuba mouthpieces - as Josef Klier does as well. I've been on a JK Exclusive "Classic" series, might be 4A, something like that, and I like it a little more than my plain Exclusive ...

I believe I tried SheepShaver back in the '90s, albeit not for anything useful that I recall. It appears to still be around, so if there's any interest in going back to MacOS pre-X as a virtual experience, that may be an option. It seems to me it involved using a pirated ROM image. It looks to me ...

' too bad there's no "open source" (as with OpenOffice/LibreOffice). There is LilyPond . I have the impression that's sophisticated enough to qualifiy as "engraving", but of course the learning curve is intimidating, and I don't know if anyone ever gets real fast at it. I fiddled around with it ...

As much commented, the Hirsbrunner 193 benefited from a different acoustic environment, but I had a feeling that aside from that we are hearing "one of these things is not like the others." Like it plays a little more like a normal size tuba, and handles this rather forceful style of playing better.

While we're digging up wikipedia info on zirconium, consider this: Zirconium alloys are corrosion resistant and biocompatible, and therefore can be used for body implants. In one particular application, a Zr-2.5Nb alloy is formed into a knee or hip implant and then oxidized to produce a hard ceramic ...

The color isn't all that appealing. It's supernaturally dull. There might be more attractive copper nickel alloys with similar properties.

Maybe an interesting "mouthpiece safari" would be to round up a dozen or so Conn 120S and copies, and find The Answer among them. Last night I was thinking about working in a certain direction with my tone, and going through my mouthpieces, my Faxx "fhb" kind of jumped out of the crowd. It has kind ...