Posted by Joe S. on December 22, 2000 at 11:07:24:
In Reply to: Head Scratcher & a Pal posted by Steve Dedman on December 21, 2000 at 20:14:58:
I believe that the intense popularity of the .750" bore size on piston instruments is due to two three things:
-That happened to be the bore size that the J.W. York chose for Jake's old York.
-When piston valves have to accomodate a bore much larger than .750", the length of the stroke gets awfully long, unless one goes back to the Conn "short-action" thing.
-Walter Nirschl MAKES .750" bore valvesets and offers them for sale to other manufacturers. Since they are available (and people enthusiastically buy the tubas on which these are utilized) that is what is used.
I don't think I have any comments about machine-bore equivalents on piston vs. rotary. Most are under the impression that piston and rotary tubas play quite differently, given that everything else is exactly the same. I don't buy into that because, like a lot of other things along these lines, there is no real test to conclusively prove it. (I think that there are plenty of other differences in "fairly similar" piston and rotary tubas that make them play differently.)