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I have a question to ask the piston playing tuba players of tubenet. Have you ever encountered any of the felt washers that cushion the top of the valve piston from hitting the valve cap totally disintegrate? I recently had my King 1241 chem cleaned and receive new felts and water key corks. The #2 valve felt totally disintegrated, but all the others were OK. I received new felt washers to replace the one that disintegrated, but I had not encountered this problem previously. Any thoughts - inquiring minds want to know.

The problem with mine were they didn't really disintegrate, they just kind of just turned into mush...

Yep, happened to mine on an old band loaned Besson Sovereign. As silly as this might sound (I'm probably wrong) I wonder if some remaining chemicals reacted with the felt?

Bloke makes synthetic felts for super cheap. You'll never have to worry about this entire conversation ever again.

I got 'Blokepads' for all my piston horns. Couldn't be happier with them.

I had one of the new felts, that Dan Oberloh put on my Holton 345 as part of his restoration, totally fail after less than 2 months. It just suddenly went totally flat and mushroomed out of round in a matter of days, yet all the other felts still looked nearly new. I hadn't done any major cleaning or had put no chemicals on the valves other than the same valve oil than all four pistons. I called Dan and we was taken aback when I told him what happened. He uses only the best supplies when assembling horns in his shop. It seems that every now and then you just get one bad one that slips through the inspection process. Nobody's perfect....

I contacted Bloke a got a set of his synthetic washers and there have been no problems since. Plus they have a more positive feel than the felt washers.

I've taken the sage advice of this august assemblage of astounding affectionados of the tuba. I have been in contact with said Bloke, and I will be ordering synthetic felt washers for my King 1241 tuba.

goodgigs wrote:

ztuba wrote:Bloke makes synthetic felts for super cheap. You'll never have to worry about this entire conversation ever again.

Alan Bear makes synthetic felts for super expensive. You'll never have to worry about this entire conversation ever again.

Is this something besides the PVAK system? PVAK gots no felts!

fairweathertuba wrote:

goodgigs wrote:

ztuba wrote:Bloke makes synthetic felts for super cheap. You'll never have to worry about this entire conversation ever again.

Alan Bear makes synthetic felts for super expensive. You'll never have to worry about this entire conversation ever again.

Is this something besides the PVAK system? PVAK gots no felts!

Maybe the error occurred because the recommendation wasn’t truly heartfelt.

K