Posted by Doug on July 27, 2003 at 13:25:34:
In Reply to: convertible (e.g., Getzen) tubas posted by Kenneth Sloan on July 27, 2003 at 12:11:43:
Joe S. mentioned the increased cylindrical tubing once or twice, and I agree with that assessment as to a cause for the slight stuffy feeling.
As to intonation, the getzen has a neat little design of two tuning slides for each valve (and rather long ones at that...geez). This means you could set the bottom slides for BBb and still be able to tun on the fly with the top slides.
I haven't actually used the BBb conversion in an ensemble setting, but I'll try it a few times this fall and report back. Andrea is a tuning nazi with the tech band (not a bad thing), so if it doesn't work too well, we'll know in short order.
As to "optimizing" the intonation, the horn was designed to be a CC horn, so I'm sure the intonation is for that. The "conversion" is nothing more than an extra fifth valve slide that is shorter than the normal flat whole-step, which essentially lets you have two first valves. I use the longer slide mostly, so therefore, my tuba does not convert on the fly.
Doug