Sousa Repair

[Dutchtown Sousa]

So some of you have heard me complain about how bad conditon my high school's sousas are in. Well I was told to wait until off season (by my director, but if I could sneak them all away for one weekend I could do it before then) to do the air leak test that was suggested to me by Tubeast. I also want to clean out all of the pipes and valves and casings to get any junk out of them. Do you guys think something like this http://www.amazon.com/HW-Products-UBSTU ... 966&sr=1-1 would work fine for that job? Also should I look into having the valves realigned? Some of the valves on our instruments are slow and/or scrape (an audible scrape) even after adding valve oil (which even with Al Cass oil it has to be applied often because some the valves like to randomly be dry a day after you oiled them). We already had to have one valve and valve casing replaced so it could be we will have to do that on some of the others. It was a quality issue that caused that (valve guide channel was drilled unevenly/too wide by a couple of mm, causing the valve guide to slip out of the channel making it completely stuck, when it was removed they figured the valve had to be replaced along with the casing) they are Yamaha YSH-411 sousas. Also what would you do for a sousa that has one slide that is the wrong slide in it (I don't know how it happened, it just did). The slide in question is the 3rd valve spit valve slide (I hope so of you are familiar with this sousa) which is almost the same as the main tuning slide/spit valve slide except not as wide by a few mm (for whatever reason, a main tuning slide was used instead and was jammed into that slot).

I am probably forgetting a question or three about repair on these things (that were never taken care of) but I do have one more question, which I am sure is fairly obvious but the person who keeps on telling me the opposite probably won't shut up until I have proof. That question is:
Which can be played/was made to be played louder: A sousaphone or a contrabass bugle?
Lets just assume its the same player playing each with the same mouthpiece and it is a midrange note like a tuning Bb and both are in perfectly functioning condition.
Now I am assuming the sousa since it its generally bigger and has a much much larger bell (my reasoning may be completely off but you are here to correct that if it is).

[Dan Schultz]

I think I have to advise you to stick with just giving the horns a good washing out to get rid of the 'junk' and leave the real repairs to a good technician in your area.... as your band director has indicated.

Which is louder... a sousaphone or a contra bugle??? That sort of depends on what you mean by 'louder'. If louder is out of tune blasting... then the contra will probably take the trophy.

[Dutchtown Sousa]

Well all of the repairs I plan on doing is pretty much none. I will be cleaning them and doing that air leak test though. That's it. Now to clarify the question about loudness, what if it were to be measured in decibels?

[Dan Schultz]

There really isn't any type of tuba potentially louder than a really good BBb sousaphone...... whoops...Dan and I don't quite agree here...What the heck...That's the fun of a discussion list, isn't it?

Joe... I was favoring sousaphones. What I said was "If louder is out of tune blasting... then the contra will probably take the trophy."

[Dutchtown Sousa]

...Which can be played/was made to be played louder: A sousaphone or a contrabass bugle?
Lets just assume its the same player playing each with the same mouthpiece and it is a midrange note like a tuning Bb and both are in perfectly functioning condition.
Now I am assuming the sousa since it its generally bigger and has a much much larger bell (my reasoning may be completely off but you are here to correct that if it is).

Bell size has little to do with dynamics, although smaller bell has a more punchy sound. Contrabass bugles are more directional - point and shoot. The sousaphone is more or less omni-directional or close to it - you can hear it in front or off to the sides.
Which is louder? Both are the same is everything else is the same - the listener shouldn't notice a difference between a contra at thirty feet and a sousa at thirty feet if everything is equal... which isn't often the case.
If they are both BBb tubas with a .687" bore and the only real difference is the bell size - the sousaphone should seem louder only because the sound travels across the 26" bell for a fraction of a second longer as opposed to the 19" or 21" of the contra. That extra 'ringing' would sound a little louder, even if it's minuscule - in my opinion that is...

Are you saying your giant 36" sousaphone wouldn't be much louder than a regular, 26" sousa?

[Dan Schultz]

... are you saying your giant 36" sousaphone wouldn't be much louder than a regular, 26" sousa?

I'm obviously not Ian. But.... this is what I was trying to get across in my earlier post: Don't confuse timbre with loudness. A contra bugle is more focused and can be more capable of producing 'blattiness'... which is misconstrued by some to be loudness. Of course a sousa can be 'blatty', too.

I can play my 48K (Conn 'Jumbo') loudly but it's more difficult to get 'blatty' than it would be playing a 14K sousa.

[SousaSaver]

Clean your instrument, yes, but use an old t-shirt and a cleaning rod. Simple old stuff that works. Don't use water. If you get water in your horn, and don't get it out it will lock up your valves.

It is no mystery that your valves need oiling every day. Standard valve oils aren't much more than denatured kerosene and evaporate quickly.

Also, tolerances on Yamaha Sousaphones are pretty tight, which means that the smallest amounts of yuck or junk will cause them to seize up.

Don't attempt to pull stuck slides yourself or make stuck pistons move. Call somebody. It's cheaper to have a repair guy fix stuff than to pay the repair guy to fix stuff and then pay for the stuff that got damaged while you were trying to save a buck.

Just my opinions, I could be wrong.

[Mark]

... loud ... louder ... loudest ...

[Dutchtown Sousa]

Clean your instrument, yes, but use an old t-shirt and a cleaning rod. Simple old stuff that works. Don't use water. If you get water in your horn, and don't get it out it will lock up your valves.

It is no mystery that your valves need oiling every day. Standard valve oils aren't much more than denatured kerosene and evaporate quickly.

Also, tolerances on Yamaha Sousaphones are pretty tight, which means that the smallest amounts of yuck or junk will cause them to seize up.

Don't attempt to pull stuck slides yourself or make stuck pistons move. Call somebody. It's cheaper to have a repair guy fix stuff than to pay the repair guy to fix stuff and then pay for the stuff that got damaged while you were trying to save a buck.

Just my opinions, I could be wrong.

Well I did have the problem of a valve seizing on my brother's sousaphone on Wednesday but myself being a pretty smart guy (not really) I let some valve oil soak in and then I took a metal pin punch and a t shirt and put the t shirt between the valve and the punch and I was able to push it through with no damage. The t shirt idea you had the clean sorta worked there because once I pushed through and oiled up the valve the valve didn't stick or scrape as much so I must have gotten rid of some of the grime in the casing. Now for unsticking stuck slides you could say I am guilty of pulling as hard as possible (I never broke anything but thats probably because I was lucky) but what seemed to work when I worked on a trumpet that had been sitting for 30 years was that putting a good amount of valve oil down the slides and letting it sit for several hours. When I did that with the trumpet they were not completely loosened but enough that all it took was a little wiggling to free them. I don't know if that would work with these but it doesn't matter because my band director told me he was going to send them in after the season is over to have them all checked out a everything fixed. So what brand valve oil do you suggest we use? The Al Cass seems to work great on our other tubas (rotary Miraphones) and when I was in middle school using 3/4 size 3 valve tubas and 4 rotary valve St. Petersburg (full size) but of course those were not used out in the elements. Also would you say a Yamaha sousa that is in good playing condition (ours are not unfortunately) are good sousas? How would they compare to like Conn 20K's (I have heard the lacquer 20K's are not as good quality as the silver plated, but if we were to buy some they would be silver) or the other brand name silver plate BBb sousas (my band director was joking around about getting fiberglass, but it wont happen). The Yamahas do have a good weight to them (31lbs) so I think that is a plus and the fact that they come from a reputable company.

[SousaSaver]

I glad you got your valve free, but next time don't use a metal punch. Even with a t-shirt behind it the punch can be dangerous.

Yamaha's are kind of modeled after the Conn 20K. The bore size is close (.730 if I recall correctly) and the taper of the instrument is similar. The Yamaha obviously doesn't have the short action valves, so I guess it's more like a 38K. They don't play alike in my opinion. It's not a bad thing, they just play differently.

In my opinion there is no difference in quality between a lacquered 20K and a silver one. If I were to buy one I would want lacquer because it's less maintenance. I don't like polishing the silver all the time and the kind of conditions a Sousaphone might be exposed to regularly are the kind of things that cause tarnish.

[Dutchtown Sousa]

I glad you got your valve free, but next time don't use a metal punch. Even with a t-shirt behind it the punch can be dangerous.

Yamaha's are kind of modeled after the Conn 20K. The bore size is close (.730 if I recall correctly) and the taper of the instrument is similar. The Yamaha obviously doesn't have the short action valves, so I guess it's more like a 38K. They don't play alike in my opinion. It's not a bad thing, they just play differently.

In my opinion there is no difference in quality between a lacquered 20K and a silver one. If I were to buy one I would want lacquer because it's less maintenance. I don't like polishing the silver all the time and the kind of conditions a Sousaphone might be exposed to regularly are the kind of things that cause tarnish.

Yea I was very careful taking the valve out when I did it but that was still a concern but we had to get it out because we had a game the next day. I believe part of our valve problems are that the valves are not perfectly round and also that the valve casings are not completely straight. We will find out if that is the case when they are fully serviced once the season is over. What do music shops use to free a valve anyway?
Our band director is going to have to buy at least 3 more sousaphones for our band next year that's why I asked about the 20K's. We would have to get the silver ones though since our Yamaha's are silver. We might just get more Yamaha sousas just so everyone is playing the same instrument.

Bell size has little to do with dynamics, although smaller bell has a more punchy sound. Contrabass bugles are more directional - point and shoot. The sousaphone is more or less omni-directional or close to it - you can hear it in front or off to the sides.

I was able to see what you were saying there today at a competition (we did pretty good compared to previous seasons). All of the bands that had sousas you could pretty much hear them from any direction they were facing while there was one school with 5 contras and you could only hear them when they were in front of you, even if they were playing FF on the other side of the field. I think that may be why the contras are not as popular because if you were using them in the stands, the only people who could hear them would be the people directly in front of them.

[Dutchtown Sousa]

Probably still be better off with a raincatcher if you didn't want the recording bell sousaphone... Just sayin'

Do they make rain catcher bells for Yamaha sousas or are there people that would make them? We do sometimes have the problem of there not being enough tubas for our concert band (which unfortunately I am in instead of the symphonic even though I know I can do the symphonic music just as good or better than some of the tubas in there) as we have 5 Miraphone concert tubas and 7 tuba players and the Miraphones are good for somethings but the sousas are better for other things (sousas are better for runs, slurs, and articulation while the Miraphones are better for tone, the lower end of medium range notes to lower (below the staff D and lower but that could be a problem with my sousa though), high notes, not flooding themselves with spit (I assume that is another problem with the sousa), and less maintenance and oiling (rotors are the reason, and I am the section's repair guy for those if they stick although I would not be able to clean them from the food people put into them)). So it would be nice if we could have upright bells for the sousas because we usually have to borrow other tubas, for our concert tonight it was some Besson tubas that were awful while last year we borrowed our middle school's St. Petersburg tubas (decent but not as good as a Miraphone) and an old Yamaha tuba (which smelled and looked horrible but played great).

[sousaphone68]

I agree with Ian's post I regularly use my Eb Sousa for concert band rehearsals and performances sometimes at my own whim sometimes by request of the musical director your ear and musicality should dictate how you use what ever instrument you are using. My only difficulty with my Sousa in these concerts is the limit that 3 valves impose on the lower register.
Sousaphones do not have to be loud all the time and can played in various ways and styles.

[J.c. Sherman]

Yamaha manufactures expensive sousaphones that resonate like bricks...

bloke "...which wouldn't keep me from selling some, if someone was interested in buying them."

random weird factoid: Those goofy Yamaha upper mouthpipes will actually work with the 1920's (real) Buescher sousaphones.

Cool, thanks for the tip, Bloke; never would've guessed that

J.c.S.

[Bob Kolada]

I like how those Yamaha sousas play. They have a clarity not really found in the 20K I usually play.

[Dutchtown Sousa]

Why don't you just use the sousaphones as they are and back off a bit? No reason to have custom bells built at the price of a new tuba, when you could easily just use the sousa and play softer.

I do this in the concert band all the time, and we have three player. Even wheb I'm the only tuba there I still have to back off.

I seriously didn't even think about that but think is when there is a loud section I have to tendency to play it as marked, not to back off. Maybe that should be what I work on. Otherwise if our section is still allowed to borrow tubas then we can do that