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This Tuba Tuesday, the Museum feature’s one of our most unusual instruments: a J. W. York & Sons BBb/F double tuba, shown below.

This instrument is one of only two double tubas in the Collection. The bell engraving indicates the maker as J.W. York & Sons, but after purchasing this instrument from another collector in 1988, the most famous York tuba artist at that time, Arnold Jacobs, was asked if he had ever known of a double tuba made by J.W. York. Mr. Jacobs said he had never heard of any York double tuba, which meant most likely that the creator of this instrument probably used a J.W. York BBb tuba, circa 1918, to create this unique BBb/F double tuba.

This unique instrument is an example of what is known as a “full” double instrument. This means that the airstream travels through the F-side tubing when the tuba is in normal use. Upon activating the change valves, the airstream is diverted to a completely different second set of playing valve loops. As the airstream only passes though the playing valve set once, this provides a freer blowing air-path through the instrument. The disadvantage of a full double is that the instrument must possess full-length BBb-side slides in addition to the full-length F-side slides. All this extra tubing creates a heavier instrument to carry around.

The 4 piston valves ( shown below) are each almost nine inches long, which makes them the longest piston valves in the collection. The extremely large rotary valve (also shown below) has a diameter of almost 3.5 inches, making it the largest rotary valve in the Collection.

http://i1.imgrr.com/1Bl/2012_6E2D9958-2 ... 1CC7D.jpeg
http://i1.imgrr.com/1Bl/7626_80A3D47E-B ... 3DA30.jpeg

http://i1.imgrr.com/1Bl/9814_4579D425-9 ... A63FE.jpeg
http://i1.imgrr.com/1Bl/8276_2262C29A-F ... E4C4D.jpeg
https://simonettitubacollection.com/ins ... uble-tuba/

In the immortal word of Keanu Reeves: "Woah!"

So... how many tuning slides? Water keys?

Do you have to operate the rotary valves individually to switch tunings?

' have seen the pics before...' fascinating...

appears to be an actual sincere attempt at a functional double tuba...

...rather than one with way to much cylindrical tubing, and another one with just about the right taper, but with way-too-slow valves.

I’ve seen some psycho tubas in my day, but that one is the winner!!

I believe I read a tiny bit about this York double on Robb Stewart's page. Let me go have a look:

Over the years, Tommy Johnson would occasionally mention that he would like to have built a modern version of his Carl Lehmann double tuba from the 1930s (photos below). This was built in F with change to BBb, but later modified for CC. I told him that Larry Minick had worked on his own double tuba project for years and I would occasionally talk to him about it.

Larry tried a number of configurations using a Conn 4/4 bell from the 1920s. It was only a few years before he died that he told me that he had finally come up with a design that he considered very playable and he was happy with it. This was very similar in concept and a big improvement on the famous York (also built here in Southern California) that now resides in the Simonetti collection.

So I suppose if you want to know who built/converted/designed it, a call to Robb Stewart is in order...

https://www.robbstewart.com/double-tuba