Posted by Rob Perelli-Minetti on June 08, 1999 at 15:41:01:
In Reply to: King 2341UB BBb 4 Valve Tuba posted by paul on June 08, 1999 at 13:14:48:
I've been playing one for the past three years (new in '96) which I picked out of 8 of them at Dillon. The horn as a bigger sound than you would expect from the '687 bore and is a what I would call an entry-level professional horn. By that I mean the valve tolerances are greater than in the trendy expensive brands and the finishing not quite so good. Intonation seems to be generally better than the European horns (at least when I'm messing around with a tuner) and with fewer bad quirks. (Actually, I've found that to be generally true that American tubas such as Conns and Kings and Yorks and Holtons I've played were easier to play in tune than Alexanders and Miraphones or Bessons.)
Although you can darken the sound with a funnel mouthpiece (I use a Schilke Helleberg II), I would not descrige the tone as dark, rather I have found them to have the characteristic almost sweet mellowness that I find in almost all King tubas I have played over the years (but not to be confused with the characteristic sound of a Besson, compared to which I find it relatively darker), especially when played with the stock 24AW copy mouthpiece or a Bach 18 (or copy). (Dark is the sound I associate with really big .750 bore Conns, Martins and Yorks).
As an aside, .687 or something very close seems to have been the standard medium bore for American tubas of the golden age (10's - 30's), and around .750 the large bore. King made its rotary horn in both large and medium bore, in BBb and CC by special order. The medium bore CC was the horn Bill Bell played, though I have a '38 catalog showing him playing the .750 bore rotary BBb and endorsing it. He wrote an article for the catalog on the 4th valve.
As a caveat, I have not compared the King with the VMIs everyone is raving about here. I think your chances of getting a clunker with the King are limited, but when Matt and I compared horns at Dillon, there were noticable differnces among the 8 horns he had just received into stock. Dillon used to sell a lot of the 2341s to some fairly respectable players -- one of the guys in Don Butterfield's Tuba Sextet plays one --, but I have not seen them there lately. It may be a production issue or they have other preferences, I'm not sure.