TubeNet

It might be possible for me to pin out several makers having good designs, but doing bad assembly work, alone from following TubeNet discussions. I won’t, but I am curious, if there are samples of TubeNet’ers telling a maker; Sell me all the parts necessary to assemble XXX-model, but please let me do the assembly myself. (Or I will have YYY repairman doing the assembly).

I know of one British maker who used to sell partially assembled/finished cornets to a Swiss shop, which finished them to an assumedly higher level than the original maker.

I have played a couple of Weril instruments 10 years ago, where I liked their playing properties, but where the finishing of the trombone slide plating and of the valve cap threading would cause problems for students and for less experienced players.

Klaus

According to Doc Jim Fox, who used to have an internet store an carried Weril instruments, their build quality has improved significantly in the past ten years. One of the local high schools have a couple of Weril tubas, and this does seem to be the case.

The best example of a good design/bad execution was the original 5th valve of the first issue of the Conn 52J tuba. It was made completely different than Matt Walter's prototype, and was stuffy as hell. My friend who had a 52J has also had other 5XJ tubas over the years since, and has invariably had parts sent to rebuild the 5th valve circuit, including from both Conn, M-W, and possibly others. After trying various configurations, and always having been disappointed with the performance of the 5th valve, he always takes it off and inserts a shunt and plays the instrument as a 4-valve with the usual slide pulling.

This is not surprising to me, as the original 5XJ valve block design was based on the King 4-valve tuba block, which was never designed or contemplated as to have a 5th valve added.

SSOtuba wrote:Your friend hasn't seen you in a while. Everything OK in your world?

I am not sure whether this was directed towards me, but our local cable provider is part of a nationwide system, which was down all night here. I had some edition work that got done, but I hate to catch up with a big number of incoming mail.

K

Never had a Conn 5XJ in my hands, but I am aware of a prominent Norwegian jazztubist playing one very well in an amazin brass 5-tet of 3+2 brothers + a Swedish drummer.

We have discussed retrograde step bore in another context. It is not uncommon with conical slide bows in 4th valves. At least the YEP-641 and the YBB-631 have that feature, with the bore after the 4th valve being expanded. The Conn 5XJ models have the 4th slide tubing, but not the exit ports of the 4th piston, being of a larger bore. In my eyes that is odd.

If the production models have a worse 5th valve than the prototypes, this is not a sloppy execution like the sense of my original question. As you describe it, there has been a change of design for reasons of cost cutting or ease of the production process (which may be the same thing).

What is best: conicity through a 4 valve block or uni-bore through all 4 valves? What is best? Very hard to tell. Øystein Baadsvik ascribes the fast response of his Starlight (?) to the unibore. I have 4 samples of the unibore (40K, 28K, YM, old Besson). I don’t ascribe whatever problems they might have to the unibore. But then B&S F tubas with the 5 step conicity through the 6-valve block appear to have quite a following. Several makers like Hirsbrunner and the big Germans appear to a have unibore through their first 3 pistons, and then two levels of wider bores through the 4th and 5th valvelves.

Klaus

imperialbari wrote:But then B&S F tubas with the 5 step conicity through the 6-valve block appear to have quite a following.

That conicity through the valves is one of the things I personally like about B&S tubas. It is a feature of their CC rotary tubas as well.

iiipopes wrote:According to Doc Jim Fox, who used to have an internet store an carried Weril instruments, their build quality has improved significantly in the past ten years. One of the local high schools have a couple of Weril tubas, and this does seem to be the case.

The best example of a good design/bad execution was the original 5th valve of the first issue of the Conn 52J tuba. It was made completely different than Matt Walter's prototype, and was stuffy as hell. My friend who had a 52J has also had other 5XJ tubas over the years since, and has invariably had parts sent to rebuild the 5th valve circuit, including from both Conn, M-W, and possibly others. After trying various configurations, and always having been disappointed with the performance of the 5th valve, he always takes it off and inserts a shunt and plays the instrument as a 4-valve with the usual slide pulling.

This is not surprising to me, as the original 5XJ valve block design was based on the King 4-valve tuba block, which was never designed or contemplated as to have a 5th valve added.

Perhaps he should simply upgrade by switching to BBb.

I think we should hear something from Matt at Dillon's, regarding this. He mentioned to me that the 56J was not built to his prototype's specifications and was not anywhere near as good. He is best qualified to give the opinion as to what happened. ****Caution - Shameless Plug*** I am a repeat customer of Matt's and will testify to his superior qualifications; not only as a builder/tech/salesman, but as a hell of a nice guy.

Hey SSO -- doing great, thanks! My son's scout troop meets on Mondays, so I'm not in the university concert band this season, or probably next. I'll catch up with you by PM for the rest.

jmerring wrote:I think we should hear something from Matt at Dillon's, regarding this. He mentioned to me that the 56J

Actually the issue with the 56J 5th valve has been discussed plenty, with Matt Walters joining in from time to time - cf. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12258&start=0

But the ostensible topic of this thread was, I thought, a little more novel. Where we've seen countless examples of modifications made by a repairman or competent amateur, I never heard of anyone buying a new tuba as parts, and assembling it.

I'm guessing it's a lot more trouble than getting yourself to a place where you can try several examples and pick one that has no immediately obvious defects, especially if buffing & lacquer has to follow, but people have done weirder things.