Marzan CC, Part 3 of a saga...


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Posted by Chuck(G) on October 07, 2001 at 14:11:09:

After griping about the lousy intonation on my newly-acquired Narzan (B&M) CC, I gave Bob Rusk a call and described the problem to him. His opinion is that the taper of the large branches were BBb and that B&M merely shortened the last section of tubing before the main tuning slide.

So, this weekend, I fabricated a slide extension that fits on one of the legs of the main slide to bring the fundamental pitch of the horn down to BBb. It would be an understatement to say that the intonation improved--it was quite good; better than many "native" BBb tubas that I've had a chance to play. For those of you wondering, locking the 5th valve isn't a real option--it's tuned far too flat.

So, it looks like Bob was right. Aside from wondering what motivation would possibly be behind the factory producing a really nasty CC from a good BBb, the mystery's solved.

At the point, I figure I have three options:

1. I can leave the slide extension on the horn--it doesn't look too bad.

2. I can see if Walter Nirschl is willing to fabricate a BBb section to replace the CC "short" bow right before the main tuning slide.

3. I can sell or trade the horn to someone who doesn't care about intonation problems and is more interested in the horn as a collector's item.

Speaking for myself, I don't care if a tuba's in BBb or CC and the sound of this one is quite nice. But I really did want a CC when I bought it.

Any thoughts?



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