Background:
My previous CC tuba was a small bell MW Thor. Great horn. I really enjoyed playing with it, and it had several characteristics about it that I really liked: Absolute point and shoot pitch, GREAT low register, easy to hold and play. The thing I didn't love about it was the sound. It was very direct, and I tend to be a really aggressive player and found myself just splatting notes all over way more often than I would've liked. I decided to put the horn on the market to just see what happens. I didn't necessarily want another Thor, and on the market now there wasn't a large bell version. I was considering the Pt-6, 6P, MRP, and MW 5450RA. I still wanted a big horn, but a broader sound than the 17.7" bell Thor offered. Again, I'm a pretty aggressive player, and combined with the aggressive sound of the Thor, I needed something to round it out a bit.
Basically, I would've been absolutely fine keeping that tuba. I really, really liked it. Then, somebody made me an offer on it after some back-and-forth and a brief playtest. I took it.
At this point, I was looking long and hard at a B&S MRP-C located in NYC. I was SO close to pulling the trigger on that horn, and was planning on driving the 14 hours from Chicago to Manhattan rather than shipping a nearly new horn.
Then I got an email from a gentleman who lived about 2 hours south of where we ended up meeting. I made him an offer, and we met up last night for the exchange. Absolutely the EASIEST tuba purchase I've ever made: No long drive, no cross-country excursions, nothing. I saved so much time and gas money, and am grateful that this all worked out.
As you've probably guessed, I bought a B&S MRP-C. I've only played on it for about an hour total at the time of writing.
First impressions:
It's a huge horn! My Thor was big, but this tuba looks and feels bigger, wider, and broader in every sense. I really like it. This is about as big a horn as I'll ever want. I have no desire to play a York copy or a 2165-like piston horn. This tuba still has some nice clarity to it as compared to the 6/4 piston CC's.
The build quality is exceptional. This is an ex-demo instrument, and it was apparently considered demo because they used too much flux at the factory, and drilled a hole in the top of the 4th valve in the wrong spot. That hole was fixed but there's the tiniest bit of raw brass exposed there. Whatever. It doesn't affect anything and you can barely see it. The rotors are SO much better than the *crappy* rotors on the Eastman F tuba I'd played several months ago. Nothing feels cheap.
It feels a good bit lighter than my Thor. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but that 5450 does weigh a lot!
Much different response than my Thor had. I'm going cold turkey into a rotary horn. I've never owned one before, at least a rotary contrabass horn. I'm finding it has a different blow around low F# and G. If I try to play it like on my Thor, it doesn't feel solid. If I slow down, relax, let the horn do the work, I get a gorgeous sounding note with solid response. That will likely get better as I get more comfortable.
Pitch is really, really good. 1st and 4th have been vented by Martin Wilk, along with added Baer-style slide stops. I'm not sure those are really necessary because the pitch is so good. Similar to my 5450, I probably won't be pulling slides too often on this tuba.
GREAT sound. Exactly what I want to sound like. Very broad, Germanic tone to it. I really want to get into a big room with this horn to really see what it can do. The acoustics in my basement are less than ideal.
It came with the standard B&S gig bag. I will probably get a nice Cronkhite or more likely a Superfine bag made for this tuba when I have disposable income. There's nothing wrong with the B&S bag, but it's definitely not as padded as the Cronkhite I had with the 5450, and I like the side-loader bags. Is that necessary now? No. In the future, I'll probably buy a nice bag for it. There isn't a dent on the horn and I want to keep it that way!
Anyway, that's all I've got for now! I'm very excited about this horn and am so glad I was able to purchase it. More photos to come later! Trying to figure out how to embed them... Bear with me...
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Just messing with you, of course! If you're ever in the Chicago area and want to try it, you're more than welcome!
