Posted by brian on January 22, 2002 at 00:43:43:
In Reply to: Various thoughts and questions posted by Doug on January 21, 2002 at 23:58:06:
i have seen many differences between mirafones as well
i purchased my mirafone 188 about three years ago so we can first use mine as a comparison. mine has a very narrow bell ring unlike the mirafones of the past and even the 186's that are manufactured today. that is probably the easiest thing for me to distuinguish between the two horns by sight.
mirafone makes their "s" line of instruments which have the brass colored tuning slides and leadpipe as compared to min with nickel slides and lead pipe so that may answer that part of your question.
a friend of mine has an old school mirafone f tuba with engraving on both sides of his valves where I only have the engraving on my valve caps (where no one can see it, go figure).
My horn has uni-ball linkages where my friends has the old whit balls i forgot the exact name of them but they were popular on most rotary valved instruments in the 60's and 70's. Mirafone a few years aggo toyed with their "presto linkages which look really strange and they never really caught on. when I was at mid-west this past december i noticed that th new mirafones had yet another type of ball joint on their linkange so it could have been any number of these.
my mirafone has what i wuld say i medium sized logo and under it are the serial number and the phrase made in germany. i believe they started using the phrase made in germany after the fall of the berlin wall in 1989. My friends has a rather small mirafone triangle on his horn with the serial number printed under it with no phrase as to where it was made. i was playing a new 181 f tuba at midwest and it had a huge logo triangle with what seemed to be sunburst comming off of it. so according to my logic the engraving on the bell becomes more extravagant while the engraving on the rest of the horn is minimized.
i don't know i could be completely wrong but these are just observation i have made
and just as an aside does anyone know why on the new 188's the fifth valve slide has been moved. i know it is not a big deal but when i played on the 188 at mid-west it really weirded me out. and it really makes it a pain to adjust intonation while using the fifth valve.