Interesting valve configuration

[Lars Trawen]

I found recently this picture in a home site, belonging to a manufacturer, for me unknown so far. Very interesting however. Anybody having experience?

Home site: www.kunst-brass.de where also a rear side picture is available

[TonyZ]

Hmmmm..no right angles, second valve slide reachable....could be great.

[UDELBR]

Hmmmm..no right angles

Huh?? They're ALL right angles.

[Dan Schultz]

I doubt there would be any advantage of the open bugle not being straight through the rotors. Maybe the theory here is to make the open bugle AND the valve circuits equally stuffy!

[Chuck(G)]

I kind of like the open "techno" look of the layout. I'dve thought that it would be an excellent excuse to shorten the leadpipe a bit, but it doesn't appear to have been done.

The "riesenhorn" is even more interesting:

[TonyZ]

Huh?? They're ALL right angles.

You speak of the bugle...I speak of the slides and lead pipe. Plus, it's so wacky looking that it:
1. Must be great
2. Must have sold hundreds by now!!

[daktx2]

the only thing i have seen that resembles this in any way is the thein star rotary valves that they have as an option on their bass trombones, but i have never seen one used.

[clarke]

how would the lead pipe work with the spit...since it goes up would most of the water come back into the mpc

[Art Hovey]

Damn! That was my idea. My notebooks from 40 years ago are full of sketches of zig-zag rotary valve systems like that. My idea was to reduce the number of tight turns that occur in the tubing between the valves. I discussed the idea with Walter Sear, and he correctly pointed out that there would be water accumulation problems in the valve tubing. Conventional rotary valve systems are pretty good at routing most of the water to one water key at the bottom, but that would not happen with the zig-zag system.
I also wanted to put the second valve at the top, with the first valve second, etc. so that the second valve slide could be manipulated easily. A simple cross-linkage would make conventional fingering possible. My design also incorporated a graduated bore, with the shortest valve tubing having the smallest bore and each successively longer one having a slightly larger bore.
I never tried to construct a prototype because I have always preferred the simplicity and speed of piston valves.

[UDELBR]

Huh?? They're ALL right angles.

You speak of the bugle...I speak of the slides and lead pipe.

Nope. Take a look. I see five distinct right angles in the valves. What do you see?

[JB]

...Anybody having experience?

Home site: www.kunst-brass.de

Does anyone else look at this photo and think that you'd be geting a heck of a lot of "condensation" running back toward you from the angle of the leadpipe? (Careful; don't inhale deeply close to the mouthpiece, nor swallow...!)

[JB]

...Anybody having experience?

Home site: www.kunst-brass.de

Does anyone else look at this photo and think that you'd be geting a heck of a lot of "condensation" running back toward you from the angle of the leadpipe? (Careful; don't inhale deeply close to the mouthpiece, nor swallow...!)

I see that others have a similar curiousity regarding the "water issue."

For those who offer the suggestion of playing the instrument at a tilted angle, I offer that this may not be a plausible option -- observe the angle of the valve paddles. (Seems the right hand/wrist would then be forced into a very unnatural position if the instrument were tilted many degrees away from what is pictured.)

[Lars Trawen]

The "riesenhorn" is even more interesting:

Yeah, I saw that one too, and when brand new,

they're riesen und shinin'.

Sorry, misunderstanding and misspelling from your side. The correct quote is Reisehorn = travel horn = horn small enough to fit in your luggage.
Riese in German means giant, huge, enormous, etc.
Regards,
Lars

[Lew]

The "riesenhorn" is even more interesting:

Yeah, I saw that one too, and when brand new,

they're riesen und shinin'.

Sorry, misunderstanding and misspelling from your side. The correct quote is Reisehorn = travel horn = horn small enough to fit in your luggage.
Riese in German means giant, huge, enormous, etc.
Regards,
Lars

No, I don't believe he misunderstood. One doesn't have to understand the true meaning to have a little fun with the words. The true meaning didn't matter in this case.

[Rick Denney]

Nope. Take a look. I see five distinct right angles in the valves. What do you see?

If you look at conventional rotary valves, however, there is a 45-degree knuckle at each valve casing, plus the 90-degree turn in the rotor itself. It is impossible to go straight through a series of rotary valves. The 90-degree turn is an inevitable aspect of rotary valves. The zig-zag approach gets rid of the 45-degree knuckles. Thus, one has 90 degrees less of total bend per valve.

Older rotary instruments used to bring the leadpipe into the first-valve casing at the 45-degree angle to avoid a knuckle there. Likewise, the departure from the last valve into the tuning-slide area left the casing at a 45-degree angle. I suspect the only reason they don't still do that is so that all the casings can be made the same, with the only differences which way the knuckle is turned on the valve branch side.

This approach avoids at least half the corner turning of the conventional design.

But that is a theoretical argument at best. Before there could be any value in such a design, one would have to demonstrate what problem there is with the conventional approach that could be solved. I'll bet that would be hard to do. And I'll bet that this trick has been tried before, too. If Art had the idea, then it's possible someone else did as well, and carried it out. But the improvement has to make enough difference to overcome any resulting problems for the player.

Rick "thinking not all experiments succeed, either functionally or commercially" Denney

[UDELBR]

I wasn't addressing the design of the tuba as much as TonyZ's assertion that there weren't "any right angles", on valves that used ONLY right angles!

Also: anyone notice the 1st and 4th slides aren't truly parallel? Back to the workshop...

[Chuck(G)]

There are some old rotary horns that attempted to "gentle" the transition on the tubing between valves by connecting them with "arcs" of tubing rather than straight sections. I've owned one such horn and noted that, unlike modern horns, the connecting tubes and casings were permanently brazed together--short of using hacksaw, you couldn't separate the valves in the cluster.