.

[Dents Be Gone!]

I agree, guys. This is the way to go.

[arpthark]

I've owned a few tubas that meet your criteria:

- Neptune CC

- Kalison 2000 5/4+ CC

- (I hate to admit it, but) Alexander 163 CC

The common factor between all of those tubas is that they all sounded very nice but were very hard to play in tune without resorting to epic slide pulling or alternate fingerings (@bloke's loathed 1-2-3 for Db in the staff on the Alex, for example).

The Kalison was a really interesting instrument. I really wanted to like it. Back in 2016, I drove 12 hours from Louisville, KY to just outside of Dallas, TX to pick it up, overnighting near Hope, AR (birthplace of Bill Clinton). I bought it for around $4,000, so it was a total budget BAT. Awesome valves, great sound. But it just had some irreconcilable tuning issues. I traded it within a year for a Miraphone 186, and was pretty glad to get rid of it.

Not in the tuba world, but I also previously owned a 1980s Lincoln Town Car, which was the most comfortable automobile in which I have ever placed my behind. I put a ton of work and money into it to get it running really nicely, basically just using it as a weekend cruiser. But then I had a kid, and my weird obsession with American malaise-era land yachts had to come to an end for his sake.

[Tubeast]

I´ve bought seven tubas in my life and sold two.

One was sold a few years after buying: B&S 4097 CC. Awesome horn, but became too small for my needs.
Got replaced by the Willson 6400 RZ5 BBb I´m using to this day as my main concert horn.
Since the latter is WAAYY too heavy to be marched and will overpower small ensembles, I needed an MW 2011 FA as a small BBb to be used on beerfests.

My first MW 46 I bought during university (the small one with 38cm bell) had to go to help fund an Alex 157 from the 1960s.
After the Alex got stolen (REAL bummer!!), Insurance helped pay for the beat-up MW46S that replaced the Alex and lives with me to this day.

The ADAMS F found me last year when some money was burning a hole in my pocket.
All those horns are / were real keepers and I did not enjoy seeing three of them go.
I would have kept all of those that left me, so no, MY tubas are NOT like boats.

And I enjoy every minute I may try and do them justice.

[Sousaswag]

Yes. Once.

My MW2141 Eb that I owned for a few weeks. Great player in terms of feel and response, and great ergonomic design. Absolutely atrocious pitch. For me. As far as I understand the guy who bought it still has and uses it. I’m glad it works for somebody. Is it me, is it the horn, is it a combination of both? Who knows. I really wanted to love that instrument, but I couldn’t. It got me into the eventual Willson F that I have now, so luckily it didn’t cause a huge headache.

[bloke]

I've own a few intonation supers-stinkers, all of which were C instruments. I believe that many Americans - for quite a few decades, now - have found it really important to have a C instrument (no matter what) so they can consider themselves a serious player... I'm sure that I was one of them.
Even currently, someone entering college is seeking a C instrument (no make/model in particular, but are requiring 5 valves and silver).

I also suspect that owning an instrument in C was more important to many of us than having an instrument that was easy to play in tune.

Rather than lift up rocks and shine flashlights on old C slugs, I'm going to mention the C instrument that I owned for a short time which was the most in tune one that I ever owned. It was a new condition Meinl-Weston model 2155 that I purchased for a remarkably low price. I ended up selling it to a military band in Canada for twice what I paid for it, and without doing any work to it. Just as I have remarked over and over about these, it would have sounded prettier had the really large mouthpipe been removed from it and replaced with one that had a smaller bore capillary area, but - since I was selling it and since it looked perfect new - I left it alone. I was able to play that tuba nicely in tune and without any favoring without moving any slides and without using any alternate fingerings, unless 1-3 is considered alternate for d, rather than fourth valve, but it seems to me that 1-3 would be the beginner band fingering for d - so probably not alternate. The fifth partial pitches with open, second valve, and first valve were also spot on. The 6th and 3rd partial G and F sharps sat right where they were supposed to. I was extremely tempted to keep the instrument, but owned two other C instruments at that time that I also liked and we're not troublesome - tuning wise.

I've played other 2155 and 2000 model tubas that were good, but not that good.

===============

Quite a few people have claimed that this or that magically made their Alexander C play in tune. As someone in my very early twenties, I owned a very old distressed Alexander C tuba which I paid a couple of men to straighten out for me. Sadly, they were idiots and buffed the rotors (and not just a little bit), ruining them. Even so, I still managed to play it. It had the gigantic receiver and I was using an altered King sousaphone tuning bit - that was cut off short - to receive standard shank mouthpieces. After a while (since the last three inches of those mouthpipes are so very straight), I took a piece of a ruined large bore trombone outside tube, tapered the end of the piece of tubing down to receive a tuba mouthpiece, and tapered the rest of it out to articulate the Alexander mouthpipe on the inside right at the very end of that piece of tubing, so I basically inserted that in the huge Alexander mouthpipe to make the last three inches of the mouthpipe smaller and to receive a regular mouthpiece, rather than having a huge drop off with an adapter. Doing that actually made it much easier to play in tune, but I'm not sure whether it made it easier to lip or whether it actually changed the instrument. I was just a 22-year-old ls, didn't know very much at all, and neither was I analytical enough to make really solid observations.

I do know someone that reconfigured a similarly-aged and same C length Alex instrument by adding a fifth rotor and running a B&S-style mouthpipe into the side of that rotor. They claimed it played better in tune after that, and I'm wondering if it's because they also discarded the huge Alexander mouthpie and used one that was smaller.

[Mary Ann]

Not tubas but euphs. I went through quite the series trying to get one that worked ergonomically AND was playable in tune. I did not succeed. The worst was a rotary bariton that was ergonomically possible and intonationally impossible. One I didn't own was a Kalison I took home to playtest during ITEC 2010, which was here in Tucson. That thing was so far out of tune with itself I didn't understand why it was even being manufactured. My now Sterling is workable intonation wise but I simply cannot operate pistons at the speed necessary to play most euph parts. So I don't play euph. Others in the stream were a King 2280, some kind of Conn baritone, and I don't even remember what else. I quit trying after the Sterling and realized I wasn't going to find anything else.

[jtm]

Not tubas but euphs. I went through quite the series trying to get one that worked ergonomically AND was playable in tune. I did not succeed. The worst was a rotary bariton that was ergonomically possible and intonationally impossible. One I didn't own was a Kalison I took home to playtest during ITEC 2010, which was here in Tucson. That thing was so far out of tune with itself I didn't understand why it was even being manufactured. My now Sterling is workable intonation wise but I simply cannot operate pistons at the speed necessary to play most euph parts. So I don't play euph. Others in the stream were a King 2280, some kind of Conn baritone, and I don't even remember what else. I quit trying after the Sterling and realized I wasn't going to find anything else.

Do you suppose this Miraphone rotary baritone has enough dents in it to straighten out the tuning?

[donn]

I just intersected with this notion today, when my household goods finally arrived after floating around the world in a shipping container. So I got to re-experience taking possession of the tubas therein, and a joyful reunion it was.

Double intersection because one of them is a BBb Kalison 2000 "Professional" (how can that be - a professional BBb? ha ha, I'm just kidding, the tuba is perfectly professional as far as I can make out.) Anyway, to date I haven't noticed anything real weird about intonation, with the possible exception of D below the staff coming out a little sharp (played 1+2.) So maybe it's true, those C instruments are where the trouble goes. As I've mentioned before, it isn't as easy to play as some tubas, it will only speak when spoken to clearly and directly.

My Eb Kanstul is the only one that is giving my any grief after its long sea voyage, the rotor is jammed - can be rotated, but not yet freely.

I guess I've been a little relieved to get some tubas off my hands. Nothing with any great value, and in recent years all to people who were in need of something inexpensive. The first couple I traded off, though, I sort of wonder about - a somewhat beat up but perfectly playable Olds O-99, and a somewhat beat up but perfectly playable Reynolds sousaphone. I probably should have kept that stuff, and put my repair/restore money into that Reynolds sousaphone. But I was very happy to play my 40K again today.

[arpthark]

@donn, I'd love to see a photo of the 2000 BBb if you're ever so inclined.

[Three Valves]

I owned a boat for 10 years.

We sold it when I started getting back into tubas.

The tubas are still here.

[donn]

@donn, I'd love to see a photo of the 2000 BBb if you're ever so inclined.

See Kalison 2000 with trigger instead of 5th valve? for the story, with "before" picture on the first page and "after" on the second. There are more pictures in another thread, OKC CL: Kalison Professional 2000, some mine but others of a particularly spectacular example with a 5th valve.

[bloke]

The closest to easily playable in tune kaiser rotary baritone that I ever played was one that I owned and sold. I could play fifth partial D open in tune, but d-flat was no good with 2 and needed 2-3. Otherwise, I could pretty much just play the thing - especially after I added a fifth valve, and also did quite a few alterations in order for it to be able to be playable at a 440, rather than considerably higher - as received.

The characteristic that I'm describing is actually extremely similar to the miraphone 98 6/4 B-flat tuba. Open D is excellent, but d-flat (second valve) is fairly flat. I still don't play it with 2-3, because that so-called "slot" is barn door wide open (no resonance change) so there's just no need to adjust it with anything other than my mouth. Second space C and second line B natural are played with the #1 slide all the way in and are just right with that adjustment...

... so the two extreme positions with my #1 slide (model 98 tuba) are all the way in for second space C and all the way out for 1-3 C below the staff, and that's about a three inch travel allowed by the stop rod that I have attached to the #1 slide.

bloke "not one to sit here behind my phone and falsely claim that I own a 6/4 tuba that requires no adjustments to be able to be played really well in tune... but I am blessed with an open overtone series whereby each pitch is on the nose, which is a wonderful luxury"

[Mary Ann]

Do you suppose this Miraphone rotary baritone has enough dents in it to straighten out the tuning?

Not with a ten foot pole, anything resembling that ever again. I have plenty to do with double reeds, horn, and tuba. At 74 I'm done striving for new things to play with.