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Last week I took a leap and brought the little Eb tuba to a rehearsal last week. The other player was on a PT6. It was a blast. But...

Eb, E, F, Gb, G are all nearly a half step flat. When the horn got really warmed up they were much better. Ab, A, Bb, B, C were spot on. I mean really good.

I believe that the main tuning slide (on the lead pipe) is the issue. The legs were outside slides from a trashed yamaha euph. The inside slides are still stuck inside. The elbow is off a trashed king top action tuba. So, that makes the sound waves traveling through the lead pipe restrict down a little bit, then expand a little bit, then restrict again, the expand again. I think this is the issue...

Your thoughts..

Totally my experience and YMMV, but I've found that big intonation discrepancies like that tend to occur because of the taper of the larger part of the bugle and not really in the leadpipe/smaller tubing. But it could definitely be a contributing factor.

I’ve been fussy over intonation for a long while as I’ve gotten different tubas into my possession. Some thoughts:

Warming the horn up to “operating temperature” is essential. As you said, things improved. Especially on my really big tubas, warming them up fixes a lot of things.

Whenever I play a tuba in a different key, I have to remind myself that I’m not playing a C tuba, which is what I usually play. Sometimes I find that I’m treating the little tuba as a big one, and it throws pitch out one way or another because I’m still in “6/4” mode.

What I’ve been doing is playing stuff with drones A LOT. It does wonders for your ear.

I’ve also been less fussy when playing at home by myself. Getting the tuba into a better space with other people - it’s amazing how you adjust when you have a band to reference.

I did some digging around a d came up with another slide to try. It's a little bit undersized, I think that's why I passed it up before. I stuck it in and taped it. Most pitches came up considerably and it was mostly manageable despite leaking badly. The other tuba player who I played it with a few weeks ago was really surprised by the difference.

Lengthwise from the top of the ferrule to the bottom of the bend is .200" less, the outside diameter of the legs is .016" smaller, the outside diameter of the bend is .038 smaller than the dimensions of the other slide that I had pieced together.

I'm really happy about how much this improved. So I'm going to try to expand about a half inch of the tubing on the ends of the legs to fit in the slide.