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I have seen pictures of a few new horns, including a 6450, with what looks like black string as slide stops. I have the valve slides on my old Conn clean and lubed, and they work almost too well. I would like to have some kind of slide stops, without soldering on the typical rods and locknets that inevitably rattle. What can anyone tell me about the string solution?

MartyNeilan wrote:I have seen pictures of a few new horns, including a 6450, with what looks like black string as slide stops. I have the valve slides on my old Conn clean and lubed, and they work almost too well. I would like to have some kind of slide stops, without soldering on the typical rods and locknets that inevitably rattle. What can anyone tell me about the string solution?

Are you looking for experience with the string solution or what exactly?

They are easy to remove the slide end. I expect that the leather (?) end of the string would wear out after awhile.

Something like that should be fairly straightforward for a good repairman to reproduce. They can probably even order the necessary parts from Meinl-Weston.

There's a good picture of the setup in this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=36454&p=320629&hilit=6450#p320629" target="_blank

I have used monofilament fishing line, and currently have it on the first valve slide of the York Master. Chuck installed it before he sold the tuba to me now nearly 10 years ago (is that possible? ), and it's still there, so I guess it's durable enough. If you tie it at just the right length, you can slide it to the middle of the slide to keep it from falling out at all, or slide it around to a ferrule to make it possible to pull the slide. But the string trick works to keep slides from falling out when the instrument is stored upside down, for the most part. If you need hard stops for limiting your tuning excursions, it might not work for that.

Rick "who probably needs it on the main slide of the Holton" Denney

Yep, that is a much better picture of what I was talking about. That is the first closeup I have seen. Looks like there was some horn soldering going on there. At least that solution proves rattle free. I was hoping it was all shoelaces and leather, and I could mock up my own tonight.

Smart feature: mount two strings and you can do double-stops.

K

Since that was my tuba in the discussion, I'll chime in.

On the 6450, that setup is standard. It makes a for a great tool for the slide to stay in, and to mark the farthest you ever need to pull it routinely.

I had a repair guy put one on my old F tuba 1st slide. It was very simple, and 10 minutes of work. 2 small marching band type lyre holders, one on each end of the slide to be pulled, and some nylon type cord. Tie a knot in the end of the one on top, and have a tension screw for the bottom one. a little bit of soldering and bending of the lyre holder, and whammo, you've got a slide pull stop.

After viewing that picture, it reminded me of something. Speaking of the slides on the 6450, there's something I've been wondering: What's the function of the rubber o-rings that you find on the 6450's slides and the slides of some other 6/4 tubas I've seen?

It's simple: It makes the resultant noise of the slide being pushed in more of a silent "thud" than a metallic "clank".

When I owned my pt20 I used a leather shoe string on my first valve slide as a stop it worked very well.