What Euphonium does Mulcahy use?

[Sabut]

I was wondering if anyone knows what euphonium Michael Mulcahy plays? Awhile back I heard him live and never heard a euphonium with so much presence before.

[bloke]

I was wondering if anyone knows what euphonium Michael Mulcahy plays? Awhile back I heard him live and never heard a euphonium with so much presence before.

Years ago it was a YEP-321, iirc. Dunno about now. I’m pretty sure it’s the same reason Warren Deck also had a 321 with the fifth valve setup.

[bloke]

I was going to say "I think a 321", and I'm glad other people said "I'm sure it's a 321", because that's better information.

Yes: presence. That's why I have both a 321 (and - by the way - it does have the fifth rotor), and also a really huge euphonium, because they are almost different instruments.

Well, why not:
They are VERY different instruments.

[Finetales]

Mulcahy hasn't used a 321 with the CSO since 2001 at the latest.

It does appear that he was using a 321 in this 1990 CSO concert, but every video or picture I've seen since has him on a 3+1 compensator (looks like a Willson to me), starting with the 2001 CSO brass Bud Herseth retirement concert (seen here).

His 2006 tenor tuba/bass trumpet excerpt CD has a 3+1 compensator on the cover.

No good angles from this recent CSO concert, but this sure doesn't look anything like a 321 to me.

And here are 2 images from the CSO website taken in 2023:





Regarding abnormally large euphonium presence, the larger (non-2900) Willsons are a great way to get that, so that would check out. But Mulcahy also managed to be heard over the CSO brass at full tilt in 1990 with the 321 here, so...methinks it's Mulcahy, not the euph he's playing.

M. Dee Stewart did use a 321 for all tenor tuba obligations his entire career (Philadelphia Orchestra, Curtis, Indiana University). I can't remember if his had the 5th valve or not.

[bloke]

Willson bodies and Yamaha bodies are pretty close to the same size. Their valve sections and mouthpipes and - of course - receivers are not. Most euphoniums' bodies and bells are about the size of those, with some of them featuring around .580" bore sizes and some of them around .590" (on the front side) if they are compensating. Only a very few models of euphoniums bells-and-bows are extremely large.

It's good to have someone who has up-to-date information, and yes I'm sure he could make most any model sound great and be heard easily. I recently heard someone do a really good job with a 321 playing The Planets. They're a great player so the 321 sounded great.

Something that's a sidebar just occurred to me which is that there are so many big euphonium solos in the wind band literature, but mostly people talk about the very few in the symphony orchestra literature.

[joshwirt]

Mulcahy hasn't used a 321 with the CSO since 2001 at the latest.

It does appear that he was using a 321 in this 1990 CSO concert, but every video or picture I've seen since has him on a 3+1 compensator (looks like a Willson to me), starting with the 2001 CSO brass Bud Herseth retirement concert (seen here).

His 2006 tenor tuba/bass trumpet excerpt CD has a 3+1 compensator on the cover.

No good angles from this recent CSO concert, but this sure doesn't look anything like a 321 to me.

And here are 2 images from the CSO website taken in 2023:





Regarding abnormally large euphonium presence, the larger (non-2900) Willsons are a great way to get that, so that would check out. But Mulcahy also managed to be heard over the CSO brass at full tilt in 1990 with the 321 here, so...methinks it's Mulcahy, not the euph he's playing.

M. Dee Stewart did use a 321 for all tenor tuba obligations his entire career (Philadelphia Orchestra, Curtis, Indiana University). I can't remember if his had the 5th valve or not.

That's Jay Friedman playing Bydlo on a 321. Mulcahy plays tenor tuba parts on his Willson. Mark Fisher often plays with the CSO Brass on his Hirsbrunner.

[bloke]

I thought I was possibly going to be playing Pictures this upcoming year, but it was just one thing that was tossed out there before they settled on the rep. I began playing the ox cart solo with my 321 and then with a huge.M-W - back-and-forth. Neither particularly play better in tune, but (unlike what I predicted) it was easier for me to settle in on tuning with the huge instrument. I still suspect that 70 or 100 ft away the Yamaha would sound clearer. These "deep bass" instruments - that sound so good to us when the bell is right over our head or right next to our head - probably don't sound so wonderful out in the hall. Imagine trimming your bushes out in your yard, taking your AM radio, outside and trying to listen to a couple of people on the radio have a really compelling discussion while you're out there trimming your bushes and trying to listen from dozens of feet away. Would you turn the treble all the way down and turn the bass all the way up?

[djwpe]

I thought I was possibly going to be playing Pictures this upcoming year, but it was just one thing that was tossed out there before they settled on the rep. I began playing the ox cart solo with my 321 and then with a huge.M-W - back-and-forth. Neither particularly play better in tune, but (unlike what I predicted) it was easier for me to settle in on tuning with the huge instrument. I still suspect that 70 or 100 ft away the Yamaha would sound clearer. These "deep bass" instruments - that sound so good to us when the bell is right over our head or right next to our head - probably don't sound so wonderful out in the hall. Imagine trimming your bushes out in your yard, taking your AM radio, outside and trying to listen to a couple of people on the radio have a really compelling discussion while you're out there trimming your bushes and trying to listen from dozens of feet away. Would you turn the treble all the way down and turn the bass all the way up?

I played pictures (I was playing bass trombone in the orchestra, and the tuba player passed it off) about 4 years ago on my Miraphone 5050 (as big, if not bigger than your M-W). That Miraphone has a pretty wide range of available colors, so I was able to play pretty pointy, and be heard well.

Don

[bloke]

@djwpe
Both the Meinl-Weston and Miraphone 5050 euphoniums are pretty rare. The fact that Meinl-Weston (compared to most others) is elongated by an inch - and I can just about rest it on my lap - doesn't have anything to do with how large it is (it's only a "wrap" difference), but the fact that a Denis Wick aluminum euphonium mute with factory corks hovers (referring to the seam between the cone and the bowl) about 6 inches above a typical euphonium bell rim - yet hovers one inch above a M-W euphonium bell rim - says a lot about actual size of the instrument (and c. .590" valve section bore sizes are really common, these days, so a large bore doesn't really make one euphonium stand apart from most others...Were I to attempt to double on an instrument with a .610 inch bore, I suspect that I would have to practice it regularly - if not daily - to be able to negotiate that, so I don't believe I'm a good candidate for a model 5050).

The Meinl-Weston euphoniums- decades ago, when more were produced - were heavily criticized regarding intonation but there were some mathematics flaws in their manufacture which are pretty easy to fix - along with a lack of understanding that people who tested them out had about the instruments. The lack of understanding was that - unlike most euphoniums - all the slides were designed to be pulled out fairly far (a bit more like many tubas). I pull out several of my slides an inch, and some of them farther, whereas most euphoniums are designed to push most of the slides in most of the way. A really serious flaw was/is that the third valve compensating loop was/is a full 4 inches too short. I've fixed that on my instrument, and the low range is amazing. I've never seen another one fixed, and their owners make remarks about their low compensating ranges being "stuffy". I'm sure that they are "stuffy", when they are trying to play some of the very bottom pitches with 4 inches less tubing than those pitches actually require. (I suspect that a lot of remarks about a lot of models of tubas and euphoniums playing "stuffy" in certain ranges has more to do with those ranges being out of tune then actually so-called "stuffy".)

One other thing I did was to shorten the main slide bow on my Meinl-Weston, being that it is large and - when cold - any wind instrument tends to play flat, and I simply gave myself a little bit of help for when quickly switching to euphonium from tuba, which I've been known to do at a lot of church gigs, and even in the middle of symphonic works, where some not-particularly-informed composer or arranger (suddenly, in the middle of a piece) decides to switch from several ledger lines below the staff to some exposed solo several ledger lines above the staff - as sources to which they referred show both as part of the range of the tuba, and they really don't have no understanding of the actual playing of the tuba... so it's nice to be able to pick up the euphonium and have the main slide so as it can play up to pitch when it's quite cold.
...A couple of years ago - on a Memphis Symphony xmas pops - there was an arrangement of The Christmas Song that was mostly a vocal accompaniment, but - approximately 60% of the way through the arrangement - not only did the key change, but suddenly there was a tuba solo that began on the part of the melody which features the lyric, "and every mother's child...", and I'm thinking the highest pitch in that tuba solo was a G-sharp above the staff, so - rather than risking cracking any of those pitches and displaying myself as some sort of inept dolt, I picked up the cold M-W euphonium and played that solo each time that arrangement was rehearsed or performed. Everything after the colon in this sentence is what the music director - or any of the trombonists - had to say about that:

[Finetales]

I almost got a Meinl-Weston euphonium (I believe it was the 451S, but might have been the 551) when I went to the brick-and-mortar Woodwind & Brasswind store in South Bend to pick out a euph years ago. I ended up going with a prototype Kanstul 975 instead.

One beautiful Sterling Virtuoso later, I am now on a nice-playing Chinese compensator because I can't justify having a nicer euph when it never leaves the house. Although, I am playing it in a brass choir next week...it will be my first outing on euph since before COVID.

[Dents Be Gone!]

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

[Finetales]

I remember liking the MW euph, I just liked the Kanstul more. Probably for the best I didn't know how low the MWs eventually dropped or I might have gone up there and grabbed a euph I don't need!