Tubax - WikiHQ

The tubax is a modified contrabass saxophone developed in 1999 by the German instrument maker Benedikt Eppelsheim. Eppelsheim's design uses the same fingering as the saxophone, while reducing the amount of expansion of its conical bore in relation to the length of tubing. This design modification results in a smaller volume of resonant air column, allowing the use of a smaller mouthpiece (baritone or bass size, instead of a larger contrabass mouthpiece), and more compactly folded tubing. The tubax exists in E♭ contrabass and B♭ or C subcontrabass sizes. Its name is a blend of the words "tuba" and "sax".

History

Eppelsheim's first conception of the tubax came in 1992 or 1993, while working at Bavarian instrument maker Münchner Blech. Prior to this time, while working in Franz Traut's workshop in Munich, he had spent much time experimenting with bocals and repairing saxophones, and built two experimental instruments. At Münchner Blech he was able to work on contrabass and bass saxophones, as well as sarrusophones. Noting that there were no contrabass saxophones in modern production, he had the idea to build one in a shape reminiscent of the sarrusophone, or the saxophone bourdon on Adolphe Sax's original patent drawing. The larger B♭ (subcontrabass) tubax appeared soon after and is equivalent to the subcontrabass saxophone, which although envisioned as the saxophone bourdon by Adolphe Sax in his 1846 patent, was only first built in 2010 by Brazilian manufacturer J'Élle Stainer. The subcontrabass tubax is also available in C.

Construction

The E♭ and B♭ tubax have the same lengths of tubing as the contrabass and subcontrabass saxophones respectively, but are much more compact. They are built with a narrower conical bore, somewhere between a regular saxophone and a contrabass sarrusophone, and use comparatively smaller baritone or bass saxophone mouthpieces. While saxophones are folded a maximum of three times, rendering saxophones larger than the baritone tall and unwieldy, the tubax is folded four times, to stand only high for the E♭ tubax, not much taller than a baritone saxophone, yet an octave lower. Similarly, the B♭ tubax stands tall, nearly half of the enormous height of an equivalent subcontrabass saxophone. Despite this, the tubax retains identical fingering to a standard saxophone, including an altissimo F♯ key. This required completely redesigned keywork, which also brings the hands to a more comfortable position. The smaller size and more accessible key placements result in more portable and ergonomic instruments.