Kurath F — Reconsidered…

[the elephant]

WARNING FOR THE ATTENTION-CHALLENGED OR VOCABULARY-PARANOID
This is one of my super-long-winded sprees, and it does not even contain any photos. Read at your own risk.
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Well, well, well… I never thought this thread would flow from my fat fingertips, yet here we are…

Okay, so I started preparing the Kurath for sale. Before I delve into what I am doing to it (another chunk of rebuild work — more on that later) I have to admit that I played on it for about two hours using accompaniment files, drone pitches, and a reference strobe tuner.

It is really quite good. When I bought the Adams I had decided that EITHER…

• I had never noticed the funky pitch in two sections of the range of the horn because I had used my 1st slide like a good dog and fixed it all as I played, and with the added 6th valve I was trying to play it with zero slide manipulation…

OR

• I had screwed something up while messing around with the taper rate of the valve section, leadpipe, and MTS sections…

I was less than pleased and did not know what to blame or even if there had been any actual change at all. Maybe I was just hearing better after working up two difficult recital programs…? I don't know. Mostly the sharp second space C was bugging the crap out of me. Then there were some pitches that were suddenly flat that had never been flat in the past and two or three newly sharpened pitches. Again, I was not sure what happened, here.

But I was distraught by this.

Enter the Adams.

Man, this tuba plays well in tune. The sound is a lot smaller (more focused, too) and the tone is more even across the full range of the instrument. I am glad about that since it cost so dang much!

I found that some of the really awkward material on the recital programs just falls out of the Adams with little effort, making me sound like a much better player than I feel I am. Wow. Worth every penny. But, to be completely honest here, I had a tough time settling on a mouthpiece as the horn — mated to my teeth and chops — does not like most of my mouthpieces. I had to buy a lot to research stuff I had never considered in the past.

The YamaYork also required me to fiddle with a lot of mouthpieces. As in a LOT. Both these spendy tubas play very well with anything plugged into the receiver, but each mouthpiece made some aspect or other really sparkle. It took a long time for me to find mouthpieces that seemed to allow me to access all those maximum benefits in one go. This cost a lot of money and time, but now I have like a dozen or so new, expensive mouthpieces to fart around with.

Today I could not find the two mouthpieces I had been using with the Kurath. I have jumbled up my mouthpieces and have not yet had time to reorganize them. (They are stashed in like five different rooms, for example.) So I decided to grab three or four of the new ones that I liked for various reasons. Some were huge, some very small — you know the drill…

One of my surprises during the Yamaha search was just how much I like my old Rose Solo, a piece I bought in 1979 and have never used for much of anything. It is marvelous on my YamaYork. But in the orchestra, it has too much of a cap on its potential output. It would work great on a recital if I wanted to play a superlative example of a BAT with all the clarity that one would want in a recital setting.

I tried it in the Kurath and none of the quirks I was having to fight were present. None. I had to pull slides to new homes, and the MTS had to come out about an INCH (!!!), and then everything just lined up. The second space C is still sharp, but in some keys, it is easily lipped down, and in an Ab major chord (when it is a major third) playing it 13 works very well.

Using my older mouthpieces I could get it in tune using a shallow piece, but the low Bb (15) had a pinched, nasal timbre that could not be altered. It barked terribly, too. Using a deep mouthpiece would open up the low range nicely, but the intonation around that same sharp C went out the window quite badly. I could not resolve this. Above the staff, it simply went terribly flat. So I limped along, thinking I had butchered my tuba.

I was wrong.

The new Rose Solo fits the receiver correctly (lacking the oddball Miraphone shank taper used in the 1970s and earlier) and everything plays in tune and the low range is much more malleable. The low Bb is still pinched, but I learned to get a fat, open sound on that note in under 15 minutes. (Relax, stupid. Just relax.) It is not restricted and can be hammered pretty well now that I have it sorted.

So, I am now (get this craziness) considering selling the Adams and keeping the Kurath.

Pros
Adams
overall evenness of tone
overall trueness of scale
sounds like an F tuba
lightweight
easier to hold or play when standing
very "pretty" silver plate (that is likely fragile)
smaller
higher perceived $$$$$ resale value

Kurath
6 valves — it is a system that really *does* make things better
evenness of tone down to low B, and I think I have that solved
removable valve section — makes many things amazingly simple and inexpensive
caries very well in the orchestra
"Is sturdy like tank." (It fell over on a cement floor once and there wasn't even a flat spot at the impact point.)
chicks dig it
not pretty (there are many advantages to raw brass)

I prefer the Adams, but wish there was a way to insert another rotary valve as with the Kurath. But I have studied it over and over and there is NO place to do that. Not one. Anyway, with the beautiful silver finish, I would not be able to make myself take a torch to it. No, for that reason, both the Adams and the Yamaha are not to be altered; they are take-them-as-they-are tubas due to the beautiful, much-hated, evil silver plating. The Holton and Kurath fairly screamed, "Modify me!" (I love raw brass!)

So as sexy as the Adams is, I may sell it and keep the Kurath, now that I have found the mouthpiece it seems to like the most.

Obviously, I have a lot to think about, here.

Now, as to what I am doing to the horn…

Today I disassembled it and then torched off the 5th/6th valve section. (I designed it for this, knowing I would likely make major changes to the 6th rotor body and slide orientation after using it for a while, so it was one brace and one connecting ferrule and it dropped off, and then the 6th came off via one brace and a ferrule. I have the new 6th rotor ready to install, and the new slide layout happily will reuse the current slide with one small part swapped out for a new one. Slick! The terrible problem with the wonky 6th linkage will simply evaporate. Life will be good again. There are some other things I am considering (one of those "while you're in there you might as well also…" situations like replacing the thermostat and water pump when you replace your timing belt because you do not want to have to tear all that crap out again anytime soon. So I wanted to rebuild the 5th slide loop. Herr Kurath used three different layouts on the Kurath and the Willson 3200 FA5, and the last one seems to be the one he used the longest, so there may be a reason for that other than cost or ease of assembly. I think it may have to do with the tone of that low Bb as well as a terrible water drainage issue. So maybe that, too. I bought all the needed parts for this last year and have been too lazy to finish this tuba, especially after getting the Adams. I also want either to make new levers or do some surgery to the ones I have now as I am not happy with how they attach to the linkage rods.

Either way, I will sell one of these two excellent F tubas. It will probably be the Kurath, but that 6th valve is super sexy to me. I love it as it makes the entire low register "make sense" to me so that I can sightread much better down there. But I only have the small leadpipe for the Adams, and it is too small for the orchestra unless I work very hard. I will try to get the large one, too. Or I may sell it since it has only 5 valves. To be fair — using some deep voodoo, Adams/Hirsbrunner made a 5-valved tuba with a low register that plays very well in tune, even where a 6th valve ought to be better. I do not think an added 6th would improve things in that way, but rather make fingerings easier for me.

Again, I have lots to think about.

And I have a Kurath that is in pieces on my bench that I need to get to work on starting tomorrow.

Ciao, y'all.

[the elephant]

I know that feel Wade. I lusted after a Norwegian star for 15 years, never finding the justification to spend the cheddar. I sold my fancy adams Euphonium to make it happen, but I finally got the horn I've always wanted. But, I also have a shockingly good York Eb that I built myself, and after @UncleBeer worked on the 4th valve circuit so it blows a little better down there. It's not as wide open as the star down there, but the tone is richer/thicker on the york. I dont need both, but I can find things to love about both, even as radically different as they are

[Oedipoes]

but the tone is richer/thicker on the york.

I play my N Star with fairly large (Bb/CC) mouthpieces, like a Tilz M1 or TheBerlinerTuba's Helleberg copy.
It will never sound as fat as my Besson/ B&H Eb but it does give the Miraphone some nice deeper voice.
Did I mention I LOVE my Norwegian Star?

[Oedipoes]

Again, I have lots to think about.

Ciao, y'all.

If all people would think a bit more, the world would be a better place!

You rock Elephant, keep 'em coming

[LeMark]

but the tone is richer/thicker on the york.

I play my N Star with fairly large (Bb/CC) mouthpieces, like a Tilz M1 or TheBerlinerTuba's Helleberg copy.
It will never sound as fat as my Besson/ B&H Eb but it does give the Miraphone some nice deeper voice.
Did I mention I LOVE my Norwegian Star?

I've started playing the star with my Sellmansberger symphony to thicken up the tone

[the elephant]

Today I torched apart the 5th/6th valve section and discovered (sadly) that the original valves had to have the outflow knuckles expanded to make the "taper" from valve to valve. This means that one slide outer tube and five ferrules cannot be removed from the two rotor casings without the use of my acetylene torch, and I am too lazy to go out into the messy carport 9it flooded a few times this winter) to set up my "shop". So I am trying to use my butane micro torches to do everything, and I cannot get the casings hot enough to keep the solder liquid while I try to twist the very tight ferrules free.

So they stay in place. If I ever need to use these two valves again I will either retain the ferrules or I'll clip and peel them off… but I don't want to do that right now.

So the two brand new valves I ordered for this work will get used after all.

And I made a mistake when I ordered the 6th valve. Or, more accurately, I changed my plans again after having ordered it.

<sigh>

It will work, but it is not ideal. It is stuff like this that makes me feel stupid, you know?

So I managed to remove the entire 5th slide loop in one piece and I happened to have two ferrules already cut and finished from another project that fit this tubing, so I soldered the slide to the valve so that I am in my Happy Place. (I prefer to work with lots of subassemblies to help me get alignment more easily, and this makes a nice subassembly to tack everything to before it goes back onto the valve section.)

I have to cut some ferrules and one slide leg tomorrow. I also have to cut one 90º curved runner from the 6th slide to the valve port. I also have to subtract the added length of the new slide runners (due to the orientation change) and subtract that from the pullable slide length, which sucks. It will be the correct length, so the slide need not be long, but it will have a very short pull, which I dislike. Oh, well…

It is going well.

[the elephant]

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