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I owned a late '70s Sanders/Cerveny CC with hollow rotors. They worked fine, trouble free. I couldn't say they were the fastest I ever played, but they certainly weren't the slowest. Brazing was a little rough in spots, though.

Do you mean Sander as opposed to Sanders? I have an old Sander F tuba that does indeed have hollow rotors.

I think Neal Tidwell's 3/4 Sanders (yes, "s") CC had hollow valves made of titanium. It was a special order tuba by Fred Merrick at the time and Neal fell in love with the horn. He played it for over 40 years. This would have been around 1963/4.

My old Cerveny's have hollow valves. The are hollow because they are made up of at least seven different peices soldered together. I guess that's the only way they could do it in the old days.

Here's the parts list:

two halves of the rotor
two partial tube to fit inside the rotor
top plate
bottom place
centerpost

The top and bottom plates may be made up of more than one part.

The Cerveny-made Sanders I bought in 1984 had hollow rotors. The linkages (added or spec'ed by the importer) sucked, being the smallest of the ball-and-socket joints fitted together with 2-56 threaded rod. I replaced them with what I use now, and they were fine. The valves were faster than me, which is saying nothing of value, especially the "me" of the time I had that instrument.

I traded it (and a student-model F tuba) for a Miraphone 186 and did not notice that the my valve work got slowed down by extra mass.

Rick "whose fingers are a bit faster now" Denney

Don't know if it is relivent but I played on a Yamaha 800 series custom horn that had hollow valves, and I could tell a difference in speed, felt faster. Or at least it took less effert to get the valves moving, they felt light. And I would assume that would really be a good quaility in a tuba.

I play a 2001 Besson 943R Bass trombone with Hagmann rotors. Quick, short throw, little or no maintinence, and yes they are hollow. If you go the the website check, out the 5v Cimbasso on the Custom Horn pages.

http://www.trombone.ch/pages/fram1.html