"As you can see, when I was doing brass repair full time I liked to experiment quite a bit on my own horns! I do much cleaner work for paying customers. The work on this was done very quickly. I was experimenting with making tubes that week. (This work was done during our 1997 Christmas break. I did the VW in February of 1998.)
The tube running from the top bow around to the large end of the tuning slide was sheet brass earlier on the morning prior. It was my second attempt, as the seam that I silver soldered on the first one looked quite bad. After I made it, I bent it the traditional (and highly toxic) way; I used good, old lead. I just needed to see how well lead worked; it really is superior to pitch or ice or anything else. But it is very toxic. (I had super-duper ventilation, by the way.)
I wanted to try to open up the crappy low end of this tuba. I re-routed the main slide to point up behind the valves in order to remove a very tight bend in the normal "pretzel" leading from the tuning slide to the upper bow. (On mine, the hand-bender-guy way overdid it and messed it up, OMHO.) While I was at it, I replaced the leadpipe and tuning slide with larger tubing and made my homemade pipe start slightly more open with a slower flare that better matched the rest of the tuba. I also scooped the rotors out some. Since they already leaked like sieves I decided to learn how to do that as well. In short, the tuba is one size larger in bore from mouthpiece to top bow, the taper is more consistent (except for about 4" in the middle of my homemade pipe where I had some measurement errors . . . oops . . . ) and I added a pull ring to my first slide and stops to two slides as well as converted to some cheapo ball and socket linkages . . . all this for some (of my weird idea of what is) FUN!
The slide parts were from a dead 186 with braces from the Bach trumpet parts bin.
The water key is from the Holton trombone parts bin, and the bracket is from (I think) an Olds trombone hand slide.
The original leadpipe was replaced with an unbent factory replacement for a 183 Eb with 5 valves.
I replaced the very rotten S-type linkages with some cheapo ball and socket ones from the hobby shop. (Oddly, they are super fast and have never broken once; I replaced them on my Alex at the same time in 1994 and have never had to mess with them since. Not bad for $2.50 per valve!! So I have never "upgraded" them to higher quality parts.)
Results:
I have a low register on this instrument! It plays much better overall, but still has squirrelly pitch. The rotors are quite worn and have ZERO compression. This would account for some of the pitch problems, but not all, I fear. I avoid playing it on gigs that require me to play in Db and Gb because it just is not worth it to me. I hardly use it anyway. But the sound is so sweet that I drag it out whenever I have the opportunity.
I will purchase a new set of rotors at some point, as the casings are fine (I swapped rotors with another 180 and things were so much happier!)
What did you pay for yours, if you don't mind my asking? And can you post some pics of it? These funny little tubas are of interest to me.
Thanks!
Wade"
So I am selling this little gem for $1300 even. The instrument has a gig bag, but one strap will need to be replaced sooner or later. The gig bag is a Brasswind gigbag, nothing too fancy. So $1300, no shipping costs, I will be shipping from Ruston, LA if you are not within driving distance, which would be nice. But anyways, here are the pics!!!
