Re: Cutting a BBb sousaphone to CC?


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Posted by No expert... on February 01, 2000 at 16:43:29:

In Reply to: Cutting a BBb sousaphone to CC? posted by Jeff on February 01, 2000 at 02:31:49:

I don't even play CC, but let me take a stab at this. If you have a CC tuba, measure the 1st valve tubing. That's what you have to add to change the fundamental pitch from CC to BBb, right? So that's about what you'd have to take away from a BBb to make it CC. As I understand it (see nom de plume above), to do a GOOD job you'd need to take some out of the cylindrical tubing and some out of the conical tubing, which means re-tapering the large branches (shudder..), so I think most of us would not want to do or pay for a GOOD job on this.

I would think a better way to go would be to ADD some tubing to an Eb, perhaps by making a new main tuning slide with a 'donut' the length of valves 1&2. Advantages: time to undo it if you don't like it -- 10 seconds. Cost of shipping to/from brass tech -- $5.00 each way. This assumes, of course, that you have some extra room to pull your valve slides. I don't know how likely that is. Experts?

Question: any brass techs (including non-pros) out there that would be willing to take on this job, about how much would you charge? I am no expert, but I am suddenly intrigued (actually, I'm thinking I just found the cheapest path to owning a CC ;) If the price weren't too high, I think I would do this, just for fun!


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