Can anyone think of a somewhat easily acquired .590 valve set, either rotaries or front pistons? I'm screwing around with the thought of either a valve handslide for my F contra* or else getting some kind of funny horn built up.
*Since the horn has a 2.5 step valve and a 2 step valve, a regular 3 valve set with a "5th" thumb valve would probably be fine. I don't really need a 7 valve cimbasso with 2 of them dropping the horn a 6th. If someone can think of chromatic fingerings for a standard 4 valve set that would be fine and possibly even ideal as I could use/sell the valve set for something else if the project doesn't work out.
Sam Gnagey has used a sousaphone valve set for an Eb cimbasso. Works but adds to the dimensions sideways.
The places I would start looking for a piston valve block of this said dimension would be with euphoniums. Most high end models are compensating which would cause some problems when augmenting the slide lengths as only the Willson front action model has a pullable 1st compensating slide and none have pullable 2nd compensating slides.
Of better brands having non-compensating euphs I am only aware of the YEP-621 (possibly not marketed in the US) and Willson. Willson like Sterling have a funny way of announcing their slide bores. They measure the outer diameter of the male branches of their 2nd slides.
There might be sources also for rotary blocks. My first places looking would be either the Meinlschmidt valve maker’s site, or at the sites of MW, B&S, or Miraphone.
Seven valves distributed 5+2 might be no rotten idea at all. Two different slides carrying a fourth would invite the setting of one for in-tune 2nd partials and the other for in tune 3rd partials. Combined they would give a quite good major sixth. You also would have options for a very good fifth and the same for a minor sixth. The in-betweens also would be likely to find good fingerings, but the very specific fingering pattern wouldn’t look like anything standard.
