Willson Thumb Ring

[Sousaswag]

Hey all,

I’m picking up an older Willson 3200 F tuba in about a month. The owner has lost the thumb ring, and I’m wondering if anyone has any experience with this sort of thing.

I was quoted $120 and several month’s wait for a thumb ring from Willson as it’s an older model that they don’t have in stock.

That price seems steep to me for a circular piece of metal, but I’ve never really bought or modified parts to my tubas, so maybe that’s an ignorant statement

I’ve asked my local repair tech for options as well but figured I’d post here too and get some ideas!

This isn’t necessarily an urgent thing, but if anybody has any ideas, at some point I will want a thumb ring on that tuba.

If it was your tuba, would you buy a thumb ring from Willson and wait for it, or, would it be cheaper to try and find something else that will fit or have something custom made?

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sovIUVE79z

Here’s a photo of the horn for reference.

[the elephant]

The way I see it, you have four options.

• Pay the price for a genuine Willson part that has to be custom-made for you. (That is actually a decent price for a custom-made part.)

• Have a ring made for you by your tech, which will also be costly. And it will take a long time for him to source a suitable ring and mounting system.

• Leave it as is, sans ring.

• Post an ad in the WTB Forum asking for owners who have one they would be willing to sell to you.

On my Kurath F (his direct predecessor to the Willson 3200) I installed a ring from Jürgen Voigt in Germany. These are the same rings used on Meinl-Weston piston tubas. Your tech would have to set up an account with them, order and pay for it, and then wait up to a month or so for it to arrive.

He will have to email them as they are not set up to deliver products to the US through the website. But they will happily set this up via email. (Yes, it is a hassle.)

This currently costs a bit over $40, with shipping from Germany making it probably closer to $75 or $80.

https://shop.voigt-brass.de/en/B2B/THUM ... table.html

Here is the valve section of my Kurath with this thumb ring installed. (The earlier Kurath had a more primitive bracket for the thumb lever, and the ring was separate. It was not adjustable like yours is. It was in a terrible place for my hand, so I removed it. Later I decided I wanted a ring, but it needed to be adjustable enough for me to dial in the location just so, I had planned on replacing it with a fixed ring once I had determined where the thing needed to live. However, I have used this Voigt ring happily ever since. It is quite strong and well-made to be sure.



The alternative to this is having your guy source a suitable ring. Most stuff like this in the US is going to be something akin to a Conn or King sousaphone thumb ring, which will be too thin, too small, and quite ugly in my book. They are also easily bent out of round. A really heavy ring like I linked to above is much harder to source and might be costly. Then you have to figure out how to mount it with an embedded threaded post that is strong enough.

Good thumb rings are not exactly cheap. The ones on the Kurath/Willson tubas are HUGE like old Cerveny rings. Here is mine, after I deleted the terrible backing plate. I hope to reuse this on my Kurath in a few weeks. I have to make a mounting plate similar to yours as the one that it was brazed to was junk.





Please note that the Voigt ring is made from a solid nickel silver rod and is heavy. The Kurath, like the fat-boy Cerveny rings, is made from nickel silver tubing. It is just as rigid, actually MORE rigid if you understand structural integrity with solid bars versus tubes) and is very light and strong. Just giving you more info.

The best option is to post an ad searching for one that an owner no longer wants.

Good luck!

[bort2.0]

I ordered some parts for my Willson 3050RZ about 6 years ago...

It was part of a larger order of valve linkages, but the "thumb ring with backing plate" cost 75 CHF. Additionally, the order had a fee of 63 CHF for handling, and 73 CHF for postage. I'm not sure how to pro-rate the handling and postage if it were only the thumb ring, but would imagine it's similar to what you have posted here.

For me, getting the parts took about 1 month after the order. The long part was placing the order... I think it took about 2 months of very slow reply emails from Willi...

Handmade tubas require handmade parts, and I totally get the price and time involved with the one-off stuff. It's not as big of an operation as Miraphone.

Also, I really don't remember what the parts even looked like, but after writing all of this, I think the OLD thumb ring I had was a big thick round circle like you have, and the NEW one was smaller and adjustable. Both were very nicely made.

[Sousaswag]

Thank you elephant and bort! This is what I figured. I’m not at all opposed to ordering parts, I just wasn’t sure what my best option would be.

The thumb bracket on the 3200 looks to be in a better place than on the Kurath. I think a genuine part is probably going to work best for me, but I won’t know until I play the horn!

I absolutely detest horns without a thumb ring. I can never get comfortable without one. Out of curiosity I pulled the ring off my 5450 and really hated it, so a thumb ring is definitely in my future!

[Rick Denney]

...
Please note that the Voigt ring is made from a solid nickel silver rod and is heavy. The Kurath, like the fat-boy Cerveny rings, is made from nickel silver tubing. It is just as rigid, actually MORE rigid if you understand structural integrity with solid bars versus tubes) and is very light and strong. Just giving you more info.
...

Completely unimportant to the discussion at hand, but because you said it...

A tube is stronger than a rod only when both are the same weight. A solid rod of a given diameter is stronger than a tube of the same outer diameter. There is simply more material there, and that counts.

The difference is that a rod is not as efficient a structure as a tube, both in strength and in stiffness, for a given diameter. (And a tube is always lighter than a rod of the same material when the diameter is the same.) It achieves less strength and stiffness per unit weight. "Too heavy for what it does."

Rick "Hirsbrunner also uses fat round sections for thumb rings, and I like them" Denney

[bloke]

Wade omitted the option of hiring a ringer.

[the elephant]

Thanks for the correction, Rick. As Ralph Wiggum once said:

I’M LEARNDING!

[bloke]

Considering the multiple thousands of footpounds of torque exerted on tuba thumb rings (we are discussing grade-school use, correct?), it’s best for them to be absolutely as strong as possible.


There is a fairly good array of solid brass rings available online. Ohio Travel Bag offers some, but there are also quite a few others. None of them are going to be shaped exactly like a particular maker’s tuba thumb ring, but some of them may be close enough to completely satisfy you.
Partially drilling into one and brazing on a piece of 4 mm or 5 mm thread brass screw is not much of a chore. Willson instruments tend to be 100% brass - either lacquered or silver plated, but if you wanted the ring to be nickel (silverish) colored, there are places that can heavily nickel plate something like that (with enough plating to probably last through the rest of your lifetime) for not all that much money. Anderson silver plating would do it with either nickel plating or stainless nickel plating, and if you could catch repairman sending some stuff off to them, you might be able to avoid a handling charge. Perhaps that same repair person could help you braze a brass screw into a brass ring, and polish it up good enough for nickel plating?

I hope you can sort through the post, and separate the tongue-in-cheek from anything that might be useful or acceptable to you.

[Rick Denney]

Considering the multiple thousands of footpounds of torque exerted on tuba thumb rings (we are discussing grade-school used, correct?), it’s best for them to be absolutely as strong as possible.
[emoji3037][emoji2134]

I’ve never seen a broken thumb ring, but I have seen plenty of broken thumb ring mounts. Miraphone’s adjustable ring has a threaded rod brazed to it that screws into a base with a knurled lock nut. Yamaha did the same thing on my 621F. Those seem to me more fragile, and yet the only broken examples I’ve seen were cause by trauma, not by picking up the tuba by the thumb ring.

But whatever it is mounted to must be able to support the entire weight of the instrument in just about any direction.

Rick “wishing tubas were fitted with appropriate carrying handles” Denney

[bloke]

Do any of the grownups, here, actually pick up their instruments by their thumb rings?
I’ve seen dozens of those broken off (threads or flanges) from (European or European-style) school-owned instruments.

The threaded ones are roughly the same strength as piston valve stems, and have not seen too many (any?) armored piston valve stems, though I have also seen plenty of busted piston stems.

Finally, the larger the diameter of the thumb ring, the more likely it’s connection is to be broken from the instrument. Thumbs that operate fifth valve levers probably need larger openings, but perhaps not as large as the openings in typical European thumb rings (??). I believe we like the way European thumb rings look, in the same way that we like the way great big American (one-off) York-looking finger buttons look on European made gigantic lap C sousaphones.

If a ring offers enough room for the lower joint of the thumb to move enough - and with comfort, that’s probably large enough, but it’s not going to look as cool.

I have a rehearsal an hour and a half away I’m trying to wake up, but what’s Rick…
… never mind, I just realized that it’s already almost 9:20 AM, there.

[Rick Denney]

I’m on my way to rehearsal, too—a little ahead of schedule and laying over in a parking lot.

The rings that are shaved off to provide a large attachment area that is brazed to a proper flange won’t break off. My point was that the strength of the ring itself isn’t the issue—it’s the mounting method that is the weak link.

I like large rings, but then I bet my thumb knuckles are bigger than yours. The ring on my Yamaha is a hair on the small side for me. I replaced the non-adjustable ring on my old 186 with a adjustable ring that was bigger and less damaging to my thumb. The ring on my Hirsbrunner is bigger than it needs to be, but they were doing that long before they built a York clone.

Rick “big hands, big feet” Denney

[bloke]

…Just pay particular attention when someone tells you that they’ll give you a ring.