This anonymous 19th Century Eb tuba is typical of a design manufactured in both the US and Europe. It has some similarities to the very first tuba, which was patented by Prussian bandmaster Wilhelm Wieprecht and maker Johann Moritz in 1835. The Chestnut Brass tuba has four "Berlin" piston valves (the original tuba had five); the first and second are played by the left hand, the third and fourth by the right hand. The "Berlin" piston was one of the first two valve designs and differs from the modern piston in that the windways pass each other at the same plane in the valve, meaning that each piston has to be wide enough to accommodate two passes next to each other of the bore of the instrument. The width of these valves may be one reason Berlin pistons on tubas are often found in groups of two or three, separated between the hands.
An unusual feature of this tuba is that while it has tuning slides for each valve, there is no main tuning slide. The overall tuning is accomplished by bits (small units of tubing) placed between the mouthpiece and leadpipe. Fortunately we had a "pigtail" bit that fit the instrument pretty well, otherwise with the mouthpiece stuck right into the leadpipe the tuba would tune to "E" not "Eb".
There is an engraving of a tuba very similar to this one in "Dodworth's Brass Band School", published in New York in 1853. Tubas such as this seem to have been made and played up to the late 19th Century in some military bands in Scandinavia. This particular tuba must have been used extensively, based on the number of "period" patches placed around its body. Despite the patches and the rather random looking layout of its tubing, it plays very well, with a nice centered tone and surprisingly good intonation. This tuba was used on the Distant Dancing recording by Chestnut Brass tubist Jay Krush, and can been heard on our YouTube channel performing Souvenir de Saint Leonard -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpiSnTJUIeU .