Posted by Rick Denney on January 28, 2002 at 18:52:11:
While visiting Virginia to attend the Army Tuba Conference, Ray Grim borrowed my Miraphone for the reading sessions. We spent some time at the house playing duets and just having fun. Without telling him anything at all about my observations on the Monsterweights, I had him play the instrument with and without them. This gave me an opportunity to listen to a good player try them out, and gave him an opportunity, without previous positive biases, to form some conclusions.
The conclusion is that they definitely make a difference. But there is no conclusion about whether the difference is an improvement.
To Ray, with me playing, the instrument sounded a bit freer and livelier without the weights, and a bit more solid and dark with them. In some cases, this would help, and in other cases, it would not.
When Ray played and I listened, I could not tell any significant difference in the sound, and I suspect that Ray was making the instrument sound the way he wanted it to in spite of what was on it.
When I played it, the instrument seemed a bit more responsive, making more technical passages a bit easier. It seemed to go where I pointed it a bit better.
When Ray played it, he thought that it made the instrument a bit tighter, with notes centering a bit more easily, but also making them a bit harder to move around when he wanted to. I think that means he thought the weights did the same things I thought they did, but he had a different perspective on whether it was an improvement.
For me, they make the instrument better for my applications, and I'm not at all tempted to remove them. Ray is not, however, particularly tempted to add them to his 186 CC back home, though he was favorably disposed to my keeping them. This represented some shift in attitude on his part. When he first picked up the horn, he asked "What the heck are these?"
Rick "with tuba on the brain today after five days of USABTEC, etc." Denney