' still ONE xmas gig I have yet to have gotten back after the shutdown...

[bloke]

...but I actually picked up one. That having been said, the NEW contractor (of the one who - beginning next year - will hire for the one I lost), is saying, "since the strings are mic'ed, I'd rather turn loose of a 2nd fiddle and bring the tuba back:"...so that's pretty cool...

Anyway (since no gig this weekend) , I decided to tear into a rotary tuba that someone bought (for too much, but that's their business) on eBay, and brought over here to get it straightened out.
I got most of the rest of it done, but this piece (as always) was the worst, and it was just too messed up (compound folds, etc.) for there to be any hope of pulling it all out with magnets...

...so here it is. It STILL pisses me off that these (after all these years, and all the tricks I've taught myself) take a couple of hours to fix, but (well...) with this one, not only will I not have to put that gaul-dern cap back on, but I also worked around the strap ring and main slide brace. That stuff sucked up time, but I'll gain it back (and more) in tomorrow's reassembly...and then I'll call the owner, and collect the filthy lucre.

In the past, I've shown these sorts of pics after polishing (whereby it's difficult to see the dents' witness marks), but - this time - here are some after dent removal but before polishing pics (nearly as good as full-blown before and after pics, yes)?

Realize - also - that the two bow legs have to slip back into the bell and upper bow with the same leg spacing as before (neither closer in nor farther out).

[bloke]

Here's the connector between the 4th rotor and the main slide.
The big curve was crushed flat (maybe 3/16" open...)
I caught a break on this one, as it went faster than I anticipated, and - somehow - without any curvature warpage.
I didn't want to anneal it for two reasons: I didn't want to buff off burned lacquer, and I needed it to be structurally strong, in order to do the hard work on it that was required.
The water key saddle was also smushed in most of the way...I managed to raise it up without popping it off the tube.

again...no "before" pictures, but (also) no "after buffing it up pretty" pictures.

By now, some should recognize the maker.

[bloke]

will finish up tomorrow...
(just another 681 with old-style linkage...but mechanically good, and nearly clear of interior dents...negligible mouthpipe red rot dots)

reassembly, roughly three inches of circular bell creases, re-braze #2 pull ring, acid soak mouthpipe only, a bit of buffing and rattle can lacquer here and there...

You've seen the worst of it.

The owner will smile.

[bloke]

The connector between the fourth valve and the main tuning slide it was altered a little bit geometrically when I straightened it out, because I suspect previously some of it wasn't perfectly round. I found a little quarter inch or so wide 1970s Yamaha trumpet brace that filled the space between the kickback angle of the thing and the bottom bow. I'll show pictures of it when I've got the thing ready to call the customer. I spent some time on it today and got every thing done except the final smoothing of the bell flare, clean up, and rattle can lacquer..

There are actually a few little details left to do but I didn't mention above, but they take too much time to describe in typing words.

[bloke]

I'll post "reveal" pics tomorrow afternoon.

(In the morning, I have a sousaphone body - that needed valve work - to deliver, and then a Christmas Eve rehearsal. They are both in Memphis, so send good karma that I don't get shot, please.)

It's prettied up as much as it's going to be prettied up. I'm just waiting for the rattle can lacquer to skin over good, before I clean up the rotors and adjust the linkage...
It's got those fine-threaded nickel adjustment screws that screw into the steel balls. I believe I'm going to clean off all of the oil and grease from the threads, and use some sort of "Loctite" type of product on those things when they are precisely in place (no clicking noises, yet move freely). Later, this manufacturer made these screws longer and mated them up with knurled lock nuts, but this is an earlier one that doesn't have those. I'm sure some of you are going to criticize me for this hillbilly tack, but this is what they get for what I charged.

...I'm going to have to start charging even more (than my current "more") for semi-large/involved repair gigs like this, based on what stuff is costing - such as gasoline (for when I rarely leave the property), bags of frozen chicken thighs, heating the house up to 62 degrees, etc...

This fairly old model 681 seems thicker than quite a few that I've worked on in the past. I judge it to be about as thick as a vintage Miraphone... ie. not as thick as later-made Miraphones, but a good bit thicker than quite a few of the old Cervenys that I've repaired.

[bloke]

"If a tree falls in the woods..."

"If bloke finishes repairing a tuba - but it's raining and dark and he can't take pictures of the finished instrument in the regular spot where he takes pictures, did he actually finish it?"

[York-aholic]

No he did not.

[bloke]

It's "done", but - particularly since the owner ran off to visit someone for xmas - I might (??) mess with the linkage a bit more.

truthful evaluation:
This thing plays as well (no better/no worse) than a GOOD 186 B-flat, and - just as with a 186 - the 4th circuit is too short for low F and barely long enough for C (with the 2-4 combinations sucking badly). C should be played with 1-3, and low F, B, and low E should employ the 4th valve...but (again) too short. There's a really easy fix (rotate a chunk of metal out towards the back and shove in a wide slide bow), but - nope.
The ONLY thing that reminds me that this is NOT a 186 is (again) the crappy linkage...

...so here's this formerly-smushed-up 1980's/1990's (??) Cerveny 681...I've done everything I agreed to do...
...I would have preferred to have finished this several days ago, but a whole bunch of home-for-the-holidays college children have been calling and coming out to blokeplace with their various issues. At least, (well...??) I got it done before Christmas.

bloke "Removing mouthpipe dents is boring, and also boring is removing 2nd slide ring flanges, bending/brazing new pull rings for them, and reinstalling those flanges with newly-made pull rings...but it sure is cheaper/quicker than ordering new ones from the Czech Republic or even Miraphone...and hell yes, I removed that little piece of brass wire (that's supposed to serve as a keel) before removing the epic denting from the bottom."

[bloke]

I could actually work with one of these if it was jazzed up just a little bit more.
It seems to be set up for a shallow cut mouthpiece, because it's barely up to pitch for me.
Just as with a 186, I'm finding that the fourth circuit is too short, and my long semitone 5th valve thing would come in handy for 2-4.
It makes a good sound.

[York-aholic]

Ok, we can all now agree that this repair did, in fact, happen.

Looks nicely done.

[bloke]

I'm still going to monkey with this linkage a little bit more. The ball and cup on the #2 linkage - up on the stop arm - has got some little flaw in it to where - if I turn the screw in enough to get rid of the rattle - it seizes, so I'm going to mess with that a little bit before I put Loctite on those little screws.

Were I to own one of these things, I would tear that linkage off and throw it in the garbage. Again, without the cachet, nickle-silver, or kranz of a 186, it's really just about there.

[arpthark]

Always really liked these tubas. I like the older 681 (small bell no kranz) better than the newer 686 (larger bell with kranz).

I learned see-toobah on a borrowed Amati 681 CC when I was a junior in high school. As with many horns, I don't think the CC version is quite as good as the BBb. I remember it being kinda sharpy. But I wouldn't turn down my nose to one today.

For me, it's 90% of a Miraphone for a fraction of the money. And didn't Miraphone allegedly copy the 681 design back in the day (40s/50s)? I heard that somewhere but no idea if it's true.

[bloke]

I'm going to monkey with the #2 linkage today and see if I can get the adjustment screws all the way down to the point where there's no drag yet there's also no play. If I can manage that, I'm going to clean the grease off of those eight little screws and sockets and Loctite each screw in its ideal place. At that point, I'm going to call this thing done.

UPDATE:

The linkage is now "B+"-ish.

I think - before any Loctite is used - the owner of this tuba is going to need to "play" this linkage back "in"...or (maybe) "play" it in for the FIRST time (as I tend to wonder if this instrument was actually ever played very might, and - years ago - was mostly just dropped/thrown/etc.).

I straightened things out well enough to get ALL of the play out of a couple of the valves' linkage, and ALMOST get it out of the other two.
The owner is going to need to play it enough to work the concave screws into the steel balls, and THEN glue the screws in place.

They could (??) slightly over-tighten the links and "work" them back-and-forth while watching two or three movies (etc.)
Anyway...I'm not signing up for final-fitting this crappy linkage, but I believe it can be done.

With TWO of them...when the two concave adjustment screws are PERFECTLY adjusted, those two are quiet...
...but there's no way they're going to STAY perfectly adjusted without Loctite.
The OTHER two have rough edges (receiving female threads, the uneven edges of the concave ends of the screws, etc.) which are not allowing me to remove 100% of the play without the linkage slowing down.

bloke "I've already outrun the budget, and have done well over $1XX of 'free' work, so this has to be 'it'."

[bloke]

I believe I figured out more of the problem regarding the #2 linkage (and also slightly with another one of the arms) issue. In the past, when I've repaired these instruments with this linkage (some might remember me bringing one of these back from the dead several months ago and selling it to a church) it has always been so badly mangled - and only 50% or or so in place, that I just replaced all of the linkage from the ground up. Since these linkages all there and repairable, it's probably the first time that I've actually involved myself in repairing this stuff. Realizing that some of the arms were smushed down, I also began to realize that some of them were also smushed sideways a bit, and the sideways smushing was causing the bottom track in female threads to drag on the steel post that supported the steel ball. Bending them back straight took the pressure off of that, and they began working better, so I'm going to mess with this just a bit more to see if I have even more success.
... vintage B&S and Rudolf Meinl systems - with the same types of steel ball and concave screw systems - also feature T-style universal joints on the lever ends, which tend to keep those oriented correctly. Also those two brands don't feature any flat metal, so they tend not to become mangled as easily.

[bloke]

I'm now noticing that the brass cylinder that articulates against the bumpers on rotor #1 and rotor #3 are making demi-circular drag marks against the top of the rotor casing, and that's what's causing some scraping noises.
Again, the rotors seem fine, but when it comes to linkage, this is pretty crappy, and being damaged after the fact, didn't help much.

[bloke]

THIRD valve...

Besides the bumping cylinder of the stop arm scraping against the casing, the rotor's stem was too talk - so the stem was articulating with the center screw's head, making it impossible for the stop arm to be pulled down completely tight on the stem...so that was another clanking noise (now: eliminated).

again:
This old system would work, HAD they not hurried like hell to fabricate the linkage parts.

When all eight of those screws are precisely where they need to be, the action is now quiet.

...and (with at least three schools responding VERY enthusiastically to our used/shiny/no-dents/play-like-new/nice-cases Yamaha model 23 alto saxophone sale) I also got YET ANOTHER sax body and neck ready for Mrs. bloke to re-pad yet another YAS-23 - then - to ship off to one of those school - two of them have been re-re-re-re-ordering them. (The deeper we get into that formidable pile, the rougher the finishes, and the more severe the denting....I believe there are only six or seven of them left on the shelf, but I made this one look as good as all of the previous ones...Some of you might have been amused, had I recorded myself straightening out this one's body/neck and sped up the video.)

Band directors - particularly sax-playing ones, are into the "Japan-vintage" model 23's (vs. the chino-made model 26's).
Heck...They're all just beginner saxes. ...but (with band directors already being a bunch of incurious yamabots, and people being into having "whatEVER is no longer made") we'll make hay while the sun shines.

bloke "psst !!! We ALSO have a couple of model 21's...That would REALLY freak 'em out, yes?"

Truth be told (and all of my "I'm a JP dealer" biases readily admitted to), THIS alto is "The $h!t"...

Intonation * Intonation * Intonation

IGNORE m.a.p. pricing:

https://jpmusicalinstruments.com/produc ... -saxophone

[arpthark]

Missed a $250 Cerveny 681 today by a couple hours. D'oh!

[bloke]

Missed a $250 Cerveny 681 today by a couple hours. D'oh!

It's really easy for me to grow weary of un-mangling rotary tubas bought for flipping...
I STILL have at least FOUR (that have been here for a LONG time) that need to be made back into tubas and sold...

I'm passing on tons of "amazing deals".
I'll just let others over-pay (??) for them, and then (over?)pay me to fiss 'em up.