A tale of cleaning the tuba
Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2012 2:30 am
My son is a 12-year old budding tuba player. Since last November, he's been tooting on a Meinl-Weston 25 BBb, which we bought used. When we got it, it was quite dirty, and several of the slides were corroded solid. Fortunately, we have a fabulous tuba repair shop in the area (Bridgepoint Music, run by the most excellent James Manganaro), and over Christmas the tuba was deep-cleaned, the rotors realigned, and all the slides made movable and honed. Since then, during the school year, the tuba gets between 1/2 and 1 hour of playing per day, and all we've done to it is regularly lubricate the linkages, the rotors (with a tiny drop of oil from the rear of the axle), and the slides. If you pull the slides and look down the pipes, I can see that the heavy slide oil is building up down there, but that's life. So during this year, my son sort of got better playing the tuba (the credit for that has to go to Teacher Tony). Once a week the tuba is schlepped to the teacher for class, and every few weeks it goes on a trip (band concert on his own tuba instead of the school-owned one, band competition, music educators association competition, band field trip to Disney, and so on). He was never able to find the pedal tone on this tuba though: He can do it on some other large tubas, but on the MW25, he can only get the low D false tone (which is good enough to get a low C using the 1 valve, although it sounds crappy).
This summer, he went to a 2-week music camp (Cazadero, in northern California, a wonderful place), where everything is dry and dusty, and all the playing happens outdoors. It was a great experience, the tuba instructor there was really cool, and the other kids were fun. And he got to play a heck of a lot, being both in band and in the symphony orchestra, and making chamber music in between. Except that the tuba played worse and worse, and after the first week (which ends with a big outdoor concert, three hours outdoors with hundreds of parents kicking up dust), the first valve got pretty sticky. So my son, being mechanically inclined, decided to send some oil down the lead pipe and down the first valve slide. Huge mistake: Turns out that the tuba had a lot of dust in it (from playing outdoors in a dusty environment); mix the dust with oil, and it forms a paste like mud. Now all four valves were sticky, and one actually locked up. Oops.
So my son got to borrow the instructors shiny Kanstul for an afternoon (yeah!), and demonstrate that it has a strong pedal tone. In the meantime, the instructor took his MW25 completely apart, washed everything, opened the rotors and removed the mud, aligned the rotors, and lubricated it all (same Hetman oil we have at home). Now his MW25 is back in operation. By the way, thank you Jason for all the maintenance work and for loaning out your Kanstul tuba!
After the second week of music camp, we get our son and his tuba back (we're actually staying with relatives for a week), and we try to practice the tuba. Sounds terrible, like my son isn't blowing on it seriously. He complains that it is way too stuffy and has too much back pressure. I notice that he can't hit any of the notes, the attacks all come out wrong (and it's not the valve fingering). The overtones seem to not slot at all. He fights with it, but after a while, we decide that something is wrong. Must be something stuck in there. So we pull the main tuning slide, and send a tuba snake towards the bell. Now something is jiggling inside the tuba. Then we flip the tuba around a few time, and out comes a redwood branch, covered all over in dust and lint and dry redwood needles. Great. Try playing again: It blows more freely, but then the fourth valve becomes locked, as if something is jammed in there. Pull the main tuning slide and the fourth valve slide, hold a towel on the pipe, and blow really hard into the mouthpiece: Bits of brown debris come out. Valve no longer locked, but sticky, as if there were dirt in there.
At this point, we are in trouble. The nearest tuba repair specialist we know is 600 miles away, so it's time to take matters into our own hands. Take the whole tuba, bring it to the shower. Turn water to cool, and start sending water through the lead pipe (shower hose, remove the spray head). We do that until there is about a foot of water in the bell, and that water is brownish, with little bits of stuff floating in it, and an oil sheen. Spin the tuba a few times to get all that water out. Then repeat the procedure, but this time work all the valves one by one, to get whatever is stuck in the valves and pipes and slides out. We even pull all the slides one by one, and send water directly into the valve pipes (obviously with the valve pushed, so the water has somewhere to go). Spin the tuba to drain it, then remove all the slides to drain everything there. Dry the whole mess. Re-lubricate the rotors and slides (after wiping the outer surfaces of the slides).
Put in mouthpiece: Tuba plays gloriously. All the overtones slot cleanly. Not stuffy any more. The low register sounds rich and full. There is even a small miracle: The pedal tone now works, which had never happened before on this instrument.
Lessons learned: First, don't wait so long with having the tuba professionally cleaned, should have done that after the school year ends and before summer camp. Second, if the tuba slowly starts playing worse and worse, a beginner doesn't seem to notice it, until it becomes unplayable (and I'm not a wind instrument player myself, so I can't judge it). Third, advice for parents: If your kid sounds horrible, it might not be bad attitude, lack of practice, or exhaustion; maybe their instrument is simply screwed up. Fourth, cleaning a tuba with water in the shower isn't all that difficult, even on a really tall and heavy instrument. Lastly, we probably should have used the opportunity to send some diluted dish soap through too, and scrub the lead pipe and the tubes where the slides insert with the tuba snake (to get the oil/grease residue from the slides out); maybe next time.
One question: Is it OK to send a tuba snake through the rotors? Is it OK to do that using only the straight path (none of the valves pressed, come from the lead pipe and go to the main tuning slide), or is it also OK to come through the valve slides with the valves pressed? On one hand, it seems like it would be a good idea to send a snake from lead pipe to main tuning slide, to get any dirt that's stuck in the valve and rotor area out. On the other hand, I'm worried about damaging the rotors, in particular if the snake has to take sharp turns to get to the valve slides.
This summer, he went to a 2-week music camp (Cazadero, in northern California, a wonderful place), where everything is dry and dusty, and all the playing happens outdoors. It was a great experience, the tuba instructor there was really cool, and the other kids were fun. And he got to play a heck of a lot, being both in band and in the symphony orchestra, and making chamber music in between. Except that the tuba played worse and worse, and after the first week (which ends with a big outdoor concert, three hours outdoors with hundreds of parents kicking up dust), the first valve got pretty sticky. So my son, being mechanically inclined, decided to send some oil down the lead pipe and down the first valve slide. Huge mistake: Turns out that the tuba had a lot of dust in it (from playing outdoors in a dusty environment); mix the dust with oil, and it forms a paste like mud. Now all four valves were sticky, and one actually locked up. Oops.
So my son got to borrow the instructors shiny Kanstul for an afternoon (yeah!), and demonstrate that it has a strong pedal tone. In the meantime, the instructor took his MW25 completely apart, washed everything, opened the rotors and removed the mud, aligned the rotors, and lubricated it all (same Hetman oil we have at home). Now his MW25 is back in operation. By the way, thank you Jason for all the maintenance work and for loaning out your Kanstul tuba!
After the second week of music camp, we get our son and his tuba back (we're actually staying with relatives for a week), and we try to practice the tuba. Sounds terrible, like my son isn't blowing on it seriously. He complains that it is way too stuffy and has too much back pressure. I notice that he can't hit any of the notes, the attacks all come out wrong (and it's not the valve fingering). The overtones seem to not slot at all. He fights with it, but after a while, we decide that something is wrong. Must be something stuck in there. So we pull the main tuning slide, and send a tuba snake towards the bell. Now something is jiggling inside the tuba. Then we flip the tuba around a few time, and out comes a redwood branch, covered all over in dust and lint and dry redwood needles. Great. Try playing again: It blows more freely, but then the fourth valve becomes locked, as if something is jammed in there. Pull the main tuning slide and the fourth valve slide, hold a towel on the pipe, and blow really hard into the mouthpiece: Bits of brown debris come out. Valve no longer locked, but sticky, as if there were dirt in there.
At this point, we are in trouble. The nearest tuba repair specialist we know is 600 miles away, so it's time to take matters into our own hands. Take the whole tuba, bring it to the shower. Turn water to cool, and start sending water through the lead pipe (shower hose, remove the spray head). We do that until there is about a foot of water in the bell, and that water is brownish, with little bits of stuff floating in it, and an oil sheen. Spin the tuba a few times to get all that water out. Then repeat the procedure, but this time work all the valves one by one, to get whatever is stuck in the valves and pipes and slides out. We even pull all the slides one by one, and send water directly into the valve pipes (obviously with the valve pushed, so the water has somewhere to go). Spin the tuba to drain it, then remove all the slides to drain everything there. Dry the whole mess. Re-lubricate the rotors and slides (after wiping the outer surfaces of the slides).
Put in mouthpiece: Tuba plays gloriously. All the overtones slot cleanly. Not stuffy any more. The low register sounds rich and full. There is even a small miracle: The pedal tone now works, which had never happened before on this instrument.
Lessons learned: First, don't wait so long with having the tuba professionally cleaned, should have done that after the school year ends and before summer camp. Second, if the tuba slowly starts playing worse and worse, a beginner doesn't seem to notice it, until it becomes unplayable (and I'm not a wind instrument player myself, so I can't judge it). Third, advice for parents: If your kid sounds horrible, it might not be bad attitude, lack of practice, or exhaustion; maybe their instrument is simply screwed up. Fourth, cleaning a tuba with water in the shower isn't all that difficult, even on a really tall and heavy instrument. Lastly, we probably should have used the opportunity to send some diluted dish soap through too, and scrub the lead pipe and the tubes where the slides insert with the tuba snake (to get the oil/grease residue from the slides out); maybe next time.
One question: Is it OK to send a tuba snake through the rotors? Is it OK to do that using only the straight path (none of the valves pressed, come from the lead pipe and go to the main tuning slide), or is it also OK to come through the valve slides with the valves pressed? On one hand, it seems like it would be a good idea to send a snake from lead pipe to main tuning slide, to get any dirt that's stuck in the valve and rotor area out. On the other hand, I'm worried about damaging the rotors, in particular if the snake has to take sharp turns to get to the valve slides.