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I purchased a 1930' Buescher jumbo Sousa for cheap from a board member. Some of you may remember it was posted from Art H. Last year who sold it to someone else who sold it to me.

Anyway, it is not designed like their 1920's sousa valve sets and has a different design. It needs a tuning slide which looks remarkably like a run of the mill 3rd valve tuning. Here are the pics/post:

http://forums.chisham.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=87250&p=652903&hilit=Buescher+jumbo#p652903

My question would be how to tackle this project for someone who has repair skills, but not the Mandrels required. Are there any workarounds?

I do know technician/people who could custom fab a beautiful new slide...but trying to just get it functional and see if I can get it playing. I think Art said the brass pipe is 2cm in diameter. Is that even common?

Any ideas would be helpful. Thanks!

- O.D. and length of each slide tube (I.D. of existing outside slide tubes)
- spacing between the two inside slide tubes

There isn't much more need-to-know stuff beyond this, other than fabricating it and making it work properly (the hard parts, obviously).