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C tubas suck

Yes, they do.

IDK, the BBb might have some bacon fat in the sound, but my CC has tusks like a Eurasian boar.

The best C tuba I ever owned (the last one)!was not 6/4.
It just seems to me that (having owned several 6/4 C instruments), that size is just a bit too big for that length.
What would happen if someone were to decide to make a piccolo flute that is just as big around as a flute? Or a soprano B flat clarinet that's just as big around as a bass clarinet or even an alto clarinet?

It's the same difficulty that manufacturers had in the 1930s building "monster" E-flat tubas: they were trying to build huge E-flat instruments that could be played by trumpet players when there was no tuba player available, whereby the trumpet player could pretend they were reading B flat transposed treble clef music when looking at the bass clef (or, alternately, be handed baritone saxophone parts to read), play those instruments, and they would come close to imitating the sound of contrabass tubas. The sound wasn't particularly focused, and there were tons of intonation issues. With the technology available today, some of the manufacturers have been able to dial in intonation better with their C products, but it's still much more of a challenge to do so than with B flat instruments (using this technology), due to the fast taper to such a huge size when the product is built on a 6/4 size scale.

Yes. The best C instruments tend to not be 6/4, naturally have teeth in the sound, and don't naturally sound blobby. Arguably, the best of the C instruments that is 6/4 is the one that costs over $40,000 (into which a tremendous amount of research and development was invested), and it's by no means the largest of them.

I thought C tubas were those things with six piston valves they played in France?

arpthark wrote: Mon Nov 17, 2025 10:29 am I thought C tubas were those things with six piston valves they played in France?

Originally, Alfonse de Poop named his invention
"le bariton grunte", but his wife suggested an alternate name.