St. Pete fix that really works

[MileMarkerZero]

This may have been posted before, but anyway...

A lot of the complaints about St. Pete's is that the ball and socket gives up the ghost at the most inopportune of times. Here's an easy retrofit that will set you back all of about $10 for all 4 valves.

Available at HobbyTownUSA:



All you need are the ball & socket eyes that you see, and they are sold as seperate parts (control rod ends). The ball that comes on the St. Pete has to go away and be replaced by a small METRIC screw (I don't recall the size, but I had to get them at ACE; Home Depot & Lowe's didn't have metrics that small), and the plastic socket is unthreaded so you just screw it onto the end of the existing St. Pete rod.

The ball at the valve end and on the down-rod end will unscrew, you just have to apply a little judicious pressure.

These plastic sockets are a full circle, so the yoke doesn't break at the weakest point like the stock St. Pete sockets. The best way to go is to take the St. Pete parts into HobbyTown and get the person at the RC car counter help you find the parts.

I retro-fitted a local high school's St. Pete's with these last fall, and they are still going strong. Compared with the St. Pete linkage that was averaging a broken one a week.

[Chuck(G)]

Why get all the extra junk? Just select "ball links" from this site and have fun:

http://dubro.com/hobby/

You can get Du Bro stuff from almost any RC hobby shop. For the connecting rod, drift over to the K&S metals display in the same hobby shop and buy some stainless 4-40 threaded rod.

[TexTuba]

It may not be the best horn, but it is the horn for many people. And if that's a big problem with these horns, then that's a good solution. Remember, many people just have to work with what they have. Adios!!

Ralph

[Chuck(G)]

why monkey around with hobby stuff designed for model airplanes anyways??
SHEESH

Because it works, Dale and is inexpensive. Give me a delrin Du-Bro link any day over those miserable nylon links used on Miraphones in the 80's.

...and most importantly, because the RC guys are probably more fussy about their links than tuba players.

[Dan Schultz]

Afraid I don't understand how to use this. A picture of the parts assembled might help. Sven

Go with Chuck's advice. Cheap! .... less that $40 for materials to do a four-rotor horn. Here's a pic of the DuBro ball links installed on a Karl Zeiss tuba:



The DuBros will easily outlast your horn (and maybe you!).

And.... BTW... there ain't nothing wrong with a St. Pete tuba that a few little tricks like this won't cure. Good horns for the money.

[geomiklas]

Many years ago I had to do a repair to the on the clock springs inside these levers. I couldn't get direct replacements so I attached stretchy coil springs some how (I forget now how I did it).

Anyway, I appreciate when someone can make a repair better than the original equipment and for a fraction of the cost on top of that.

Thank you so very much for sharing this little tip!

George

[Ace]

George,

I looked at your site that you linked. Very interesting reading. Congratulations on your nice Cerveny Piggy tuba.

Just one correction, if you don't mind me nit-picking.
"Cerveny" is pronounced Chair'-vin-yee. (Strong accent on first syllable.)

Best,

Ace

[Dan Schultz]

"Cerveny" is pronounced Chair'-vin-yee. (Strong accent on first syllable.) Ace

Interesting! Here is southern-Indiana, most of us say cher (with the 'ch' like 'chair') - vay - knee ... with the emphasis on the 'vay'. I don't know what they call it in Kentucky, but I'm sure it's different.

[Chuck(G)]

Many years ago I had to do a repair to the on the clock springs inside these levers. I couldn't get direct replacements so I attached stretchy coil springs some how (I forget now how I did it).

It's actually not too hard to repair a broken clockspring valve. You can use ordinary clock mainspring, available at any place that repairs antique clocks. Use a pair of longnose pliers as a heat sink and heat only the part of the spring that needs to be bent in a torch flame to anneal it--otherwise the spring will snap off when you try to bend it.

[iiipopes]

I have a friend with a Miraphone with the first generation of ball linkage, and the ends are cracking and stripping. Will the same thing work on the Miraphone?

[Dan Schultz]

I have a friend with a Miraphone with the first generation of ball linkage, and the ends are cracking and stripping. Will the same thing work on the Miraphone?

I have not seen a tuba with mechanical linkage that couldn't be improved through the use of spherical couplings. I've put them on Zeiss, Miraphone, and Meinl horns.... just to name a few. The Miraphone BBb 5V I currently play has flat-bar 'S' links but if I keep it long enough for it to start making making noise, I'm going to simply change it to Du-Bro links rather than to go through the trial-and-error of swedging the tubes and peening the flat-bar ends.