Eastman 836 CC Tuba Check

[Kontrabasstuba]

A few weeks ago I got an email from the company Eastman. The new CC tuba EBC 836 is available on the European market and whether I would be interested to play this once, or to test. Of course I don't say no! The instrument can be played excellently, the intonation is almost perfect and the sound is as dark as it is rich in overtones. The quality is excellent.
I like it very much and it is a lot of fun to play it.

Also I recommend the channel of Chris Olka.
He plays the instrument like no other!
Thanks to: Chuck Kerrigan and Jean-Francois Bescond and of course Marcel Boom for the video!


[youtube]https://youtu.be/l6JQoS2_BIQ[/youtube]

[prairieboy1]

Thank you, Daniel! Such beautiful playing! I am really looking forward to hearing you on the Holton 345 BBb!

[Kontrabasstuba]

Many thanks! Delivery from the Holton is tomorrow... can't wait ;-)

[bort2.0]

I mean this politely but seriously:

* How is the intonation if you DON'T use the 1st valve slide constantly? I know some people just kind of do that by habit, are super particular about micro-tuning, or... because the horn needs it. I hear "intonation is almost perfect" but see you moving the slide constantly. I'm at odds with that, but maybe my expectation of a 6/4 CC tuba is unreasonable.

* I've heard more than a few professional tuba players say "no thanks" to the 836, for a variety of reasons. But primarily because of a so-so sound and just not "grabbing" them more than other tubas. Not that it's offensive or bad, but just kind of "meh".

* You sound great! I liked that video much better than Chris Olka's. No disrespect to him, just that his videos are usually more technical and/or farty. Just different!

[prairieboy1]

Many thanks! Delivery from the Holton is tomorrow... can't wait ;-)

As soon as you are ready, let those excerpts and etudes fly!!

[Kontrabasstuba]

I mean this politely but seriously:

* How is the intonation if you DON'T use the 1st valve slide constantly? I know some people just kind of do that by habit, are super particular about micro-tuning, or... because the horn needs it. I hear "intonation is almost perfect" but see you moving the slide constantly. I'm at odds with that, but maybe my expectation of a 6/4 CC tuba is unreasonable.

* I've heard more than a few professional tuba players say "no thanks" to the 836, for a variety of reasons. But primarily because of a so-so sound and just not "grabbing" them more than other tubas. Not that it's offensive or bad, but just kind of "meh".

* You sound great! I liked that video much better than Chris Olka's. No disrespect to him, just that his videos are usually more technical and/or farty. Just different!

At first: I LOVE your profile Picture. The mouse reminds me when i was a child. :-)

* I am very sensitive about intonation. I am also always correcting this on my BBb or CC tubas. I always like to play the instrument as it is. This tuba seems to be a new model. It is much better than other models I have tested.
For me is the intonation not bad. Easy to handle.
Btw. All of my recordings are NOT Autotuned. I will present the instrument as it is.

* I have played all of the York copies and all are a little different. This one is extremely good to handle.
For example the Adams CC is much bigger and in my opinion not to compare with a "typical York copy" like Nirschl, Yamaha etc... But the Adams has more sound!
I testet and work a little with Adams on this new 6/4 CC Tubas. Perry Hoogendijk made the most and now it's much better. Great Orchestral sound.

* Thank you for your compliment :-)

[bloke]

The easiest to play in tune (of all of the factory-C york-alikes) is still the 826.
As much of a nearly completely un-fan I am of Yamaha tubas, that is one that (though I'm not interested in owning one) is better than anything else in this category.

It also has a fairly good amount of tonal definition, possibly because - overall - it's smaller than some of the others, and more properly physically scaled down to the 16-feet bugle length.

This style of tuba seems to generally work out better in B-flat, as the smaller bows (if C) must really "hurry" to become larger, when the bottom bow and bell are the same sizes as if-B-flat. An analogy might possibly be those Bach "long bell" E-flat trumpets (which are basically B-flat trumpets "factory cut" to E-flat...which offer squirrely tuning and less-focused-sound than some of the finest more scaled-down (and -arguably - properly proportioned) E-flat trumpets.

Of the B-flat 6/4 (sort-of) york-alikes, the Martins offer the easiest good intonation (yet no one seems interested in reproducing them...??)...and Martins also are quite different from the Holton/York 6/4 B-flat tubas, and even quite different from the Conn's (which - to me - offer the most challenging intonation issues). Holton BB-345's, consistently, tend to offer the most potential for resonance, but only a certain percentage of them seem to be fairly easy to play in tune - with the rest offering similar challenges to most all of the various C models.

I glad other people enjoy them (the C york-alikes), and I'm glad that I got over buying them/modifying them - trying to find the ONE that works.

[tubro]

Sorry i have to disagree the most in-tune cc Tuba is the Gronitz PCK......
I really don't understand why anybody is putting these tubas above the german instruments!

[bloke]

yeah...
I owned a PCK.
The G in the staff, oddly, was quite flat, and - similar to the Swiss C tubas - It’s one of those models that required me to keep my thumb and index finger on the first slide with my pinky on the third slide…a hell of a lot of choreography to keep the tuning “between the ditches“...
...and the fourth valve response was odd.
I eventually gave up on using it much, and resorted to mostly using the three valve fingering system staying extremely busy manipulating the number one slide… And again: the number three slide as well.
Finally, it’s sort of reminded me of a lot of Yamaha trombones, in that the low range brightened up too easily, and I was always having to limit the decimals in order to control the sonority...
...and it’s really not a 6/4 tuba.
Side-by-side to a Willson 3050, the size is nearly identical.
I actually recorded with that PCK, a little bit.
There’s a commercial recording of Eric Ruske playing the Glière, and the tuba heard in that recording is my formerly-owned PCK.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=d4Ef ... 4EfZ8HKsrc

[tubro]

I don't know what Gronitz you had but the modern (Freiburg built) PCK is one of the best CC Tubas on the market, totally underrated! Its not the same size as the nirschl york (more like the Meinl-Weston baer model) but this size has many benefits too.
So many players say this and that about tubas when they get payed for it. The small shops has to be preserved they don't have the money to pay musicians......
Now cerveny is gone, who knows for how long Rudi meinl will exist.......when all the variety is gone we cmcan be happy to play 10 different chinese tuba brands all built in the same factory, bravo

yeah...
I owned a PCK.
The G in the staff, oddly, was quite flat, and - similar to the Swiss C tubas - It’s one of those models that required me to keep my thumb and index finger on the first slide with my pinky on the third slide…a hell of a lot of choreography to keep the tuning “between the ditches“...
...and the fourth valve response was odd.
I eventually gave up on using it much, and resorted to mostly using the three valve fingering system staying extremely busy manipulating the number one slide… And again: the number three slide as well.
Finally, it’s sort of reminded me of a lot of Yamaha trombones, in that the low range brightened up too easily, and I was always having to limit the decimals in order to control the sonority...
...and it’s really not a 6/4 tuba.
Side-by-side to a Willson 3050, the size is nearly identical.
I actually recorded with that PCK, a little bit.
There’s a commercial recording of Eric Ruske playing the Glière, and the tuba heard in that recording is my formerly-owned PCK.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=d4Ef ... 4EfZ8HKsrc

[bloke]

The Gronitz piston tubas used the same valveset as the Kalison tubas, and I suspect the bows and bells (at least with the 5/4 PCK) were Czech...
...so I'm not sure how much was actually fabricated in that shop vs. that shop being an assembly shop...(as I also recall a repair-guy at a New Jersey music store assembling tubas - virtually identical to PCK tubas - from ordered-in parts, for a year or two).

The PCK wasn't a bad tuba, but tubas that require too much slide choreography are distracting (to me), which certainly include (epic choreography demanded) the Swiss (and now: Dutch) tubas.

Western civilization people no longer raise up their progeny in their families' trades, but (over the last century, with this dubious tendency first championed - west of the Atlantic Ocean - by an American president who assumed power in 1913) have been encouraged to send them off to "college" (to "better" themselves...which means: "only produce rhetoric - rather than producing anything that is real"). Further, people are encouraged to work for mega-employers (rather than to own their means of production), rather than working for themselves. Finally, the encouragement of alternate lifestyles has resulted in a general retreat in the production of progeny - even were it that there were family-owned trades to pass down.

China's extremely distasteful/draconian socio-political tack aside (which is being quickly adopted by the west), it's difficult to blame a country (with a considerable portion of it's 1.4 BILLION folks otherwise twiddling their thumbs) for taking up the slack for (basically: "slacking") westerners - who still wish to have things, but don't wish to have to get up out of their chairs and actually make them. ...and the fact that so many westerners view the cheaper-grades of Chinese instruments/products-in-general as "good enough" says even more about what's occurring in the west, does it not?

summary:
- Gronitz PCK tubas:
- well-made
- seem to have been assembled with parts made elsewhere (again: as demonstrated by a New Jersey music store, which was able to duplicate them)
- I personally (having gone through a number of such instruments) tend to reject tubas which carry the baggage of epic intonation issues - demanding slide choreography that distract me from the music.

China phenomenon:
- no one to blame but western civilization, it (via ignorance, gullibility, and general decline) having consistently allowed some very bad people to rule over it's countries, and it's gradual embracing of "busy-work" - over actually productive work

[Doc]

I'd be curious to know what differences, if any, exist between those earlier PCK's and the new ones. I was impressed by the first PCK I tried, but it WAS in an elephant room. I don't remember the intonation tendencies, but I likely wouldn't have batted an eye since, at the time, I was playing a 3/4 Rudy CC, an Alex F tuba, and a Kurath 5/4 CC, all of which needed a bit of slide manipulation to some extent.

These days, much like Joe, I want to focus more on the message than having to work on (and be distracted by) the components of the message. Early on, I subscribed to the theory of "find the horn that makes THE sound, and learn to play it in tune." I also played 5-6 hours per day during that time, so slide pulling became second nature after countless repetitions. As time went on, and I played less hours per day, got a day job, adult life kicked in, etc., I came around to the wisdom of the Bill Rose philosophy of "you're always going to sound like yourself, so first find a horn that plays in tune, then consider the sound" (barring any other outstanding quirks, of course). I was never surprised that he employed two 186 CC's as his go-to horns. And he was always on the money. He said that he loved the sound of Alexanders (which were popular in his heyday prior to the arms race), but they were too much work to play.

[YorkNumber3.0]

.

[tubro]

There are many informations that aren't right!
The valves was not the same as on the kalison (in the past Gronitz used bauerfeind now meinlschmidt)
Its true that Dietrich kleinehorst took parts from many different companys (meinl weston, Boehm&meinl, etc) but that very common in brass instrument building (as did and still does companys like Alexander, kalison, nirschl, rudolf meinl). Actually there is nearly no trumpet maker in germany who build their bells for their own. There are very fine bell manufacturing companies like sandner, ewald meinl, worischek, b&s, jurgen voigt, etc.
So the mastery is not to build every part for yourself the mastery (and that made DKH a real master) was to fit all the parts togheter and modify the parts that they fit to the right instrument. Its not possible to take a cerveny mainbow and put it in a Gronitz pck.... You have to modify it.

[bloke]

' glad you like yours...(You're politickin' really hard for it...You're not trying to get my to buy yours, correct? ...because I had enough of the one that I had.)

I did a quick piston-swap with a Kalison (that was in for repair) when I still owned my PCK - just to make sure the valves were - indeed - the same...They were the same, as were the valve caps.

again: I grew weary of the flat G-in-the-staff, as well as having to mess with the #1 slide so much, having to mess with the #3 slide slide, the unfocused 4th valve response, and the barky low range.

[UncleBeer]

I'm not sure how much was actually fabricated in that shop vs. that shop being an assembly shop.

I saw Dietrich making those goofy stacked double rotor valves for his F/BBb tubas from scratch. He definitely built some valves himself.

[bloke]

I'm not sure how much was actually fabricated in that shop vs. that shop being an assembly shop.

I saw Dietrich making those goofy stacked double rotor valves for his F/BBb tubas from scratch. He definitely built some valves himself.

I'm sure he did. Additionally, he did a very good job of mounting PISTON valvesets, as the slide alignment was very good on the ones that I've had in my shop, and that's NOT a "given", when installing any valvesets, whether-or-not made in-house.

Additionally, Dietrich was always VERY nice to me, in communications...' even purchased a mouthpiece from me.

The Gronitz piston tubas used the same valveset as the Kalison tubas

[TubātōTubŏtō]

The Gronitz piston tubas used the same valveset as the Kalison tubas, and I suspect the bows and bells (at least with the 5/4 PCK) were Czech...
...so I'm not sure how much was actually fabricated in that shop vs. that shop being an assembly shop...(as I also recall a repair-guy at a New Jersey music store assembling tubas - virtually identical to PCK tubas - from ordered-in parts, for a year or two).

The PCK wasn't a bad tuba, but tubas that require too much slide choreography are distracting (to me), which certainly include (epic choreography demanded) the Swiss (and now: Dutch) tubas.

Western civilization people no longer raise up their progeny in their families' trades, but (over the last century, with this dubious tendency first championed - west of the Atlantic Ocean - by an American president who assumed power in 1913) have been encouraged to send them off to "college" (to "better" themselves...which means: "only produce rhetoric - rather than producing anything that is real"). Further, people are encouraged to work for mega-employers (rather than to own their means of production), rather than working for themselves. Finally, the encouragement of alternate lifestyles has resulted in a general retreat in the production of progeny - even were it that there were family-owned trades to pass down.

China's extremely distasteful/draconian socio-political tack aside (which is being quickly adopted by the west), it's difficult to blame a country (with a considerable portion of it's 1.4 BILLION folks otherwise twiddling their thumbs) for taking up the slack for (basically: "slacking") westerners - who still wish to have things, but don't wish to have to get up out of their chairs and actually make them. ...and the fact that so many westerners view the cheaper-grades of Chinese instruments/products-in-general as "good enough" says even more about what's occurring in the west, does it not?

summary:
- Gronitz PCK tubas:
- well-made
- seem to have been assembled with parts made elsewhere (again: as demonstrated by a New Jersey music store, which was able to duplicate them)
- I personally (having gone through a number of such instruments) tend to reject tubas which carry the baggage of epic intonation issues - demanding slide choreography that distract me from the music.

China phenomenon:
- no one to blame but western civilization, it (via ignorance, gullibility, and general decline) having consistently allowed some very bad people to rule over it's countries, and it's gradual embracing of "busy-work" - over actually productive work

1913: with that decision we lost our currency, state representation in congress, a generation of young men in a frivolous war, and something about tubas...?

[the elephant]

We're sorry, Daniel. There was a good tuba thread in here — somewhere — amongst all this garbage. This happens too often. What a shame.

[bloke]

The Gronitz apologist became argumentative, and (quickly growing bored with that ardent defense of a model of tuba that I know all too well - attempting to move the thread away from being a Gronitz PCK discussion) pointed out that the LOSS of family trades/businesses is the fault of OUR cultures, and NOT the fault of the Chinese (including NOT the fault of Eastman).
That having been said, I never view myself as being qualified to apologize for what others say, and nor do I view my layman position - here - as that of an amateur/part-time post policeman.
oh yeah: “I go Pogo!”