Holton 345 Redux

[The Big Ben]

You've put so much effort into this horn, I'm glad it turned into something you really like. When/if the time comes, the removable valve section will simplify getting a full valve refit.

[York-aholic]

I would love to have been a fly on the wall (in a time lapse perhaps) for all of your work, play testing, comparing, and re-fixing.

It would have been very informative and incredibly interesting to have been there over time.

Thank you for the snap shots along the way!

[bloke]

oem Holton 345 mouthpipes seem to start fairly large, and those receivers are absolutely “Euro”. The special ones - like Sprecht’s B-flat - play fine, but the quirky-tuning ones are fairly difficult to lip, due to the large small end.

F.B. (rotary Miraphone) features a more conservative small end on its mouthpipe and is fairly easy to lip – even though the bore size is 21.2 mm. The third partial F on that instrument is one of those that starts out slightly flat cold, but meets the intonation of the other open pitches - once the instrument is warm.

As far as whether mouthpipes are long or short… So what if instruments’ valves are stuck in the taper here or there (??) they all continue to expand.

(I don’t know anything about anything.)

I’m thinking that your pistons are probably the same as the early Nirschl “small valve“ pistons used on those 1980s C tubas made in Europe - probably even including the porting… even though the configuration is not slanted.

I can’t promise anything at all, but email me the OD. I’ll look through junk.

[the elephant]

My mistake. I was talking about your Holton BBb squatty horn. I thought it was Fat Bastard. I was talking about that one, specifically, and not the 98

[the elephant]

I can’t promise anything at all, but email me the OD. I’ll look through junk.

I'm sorry. I missed something here. OD of what? I did not realize I had asked for something, so I am not sure what you are offering to search for. But thanks in advance.

These pistons are from a Böhm & Meinl CC with Nirschl pistons, made in 1990 (SN "090XXX") and have the same porting as my horizontal set by the same maker (1989) on the Kurath. The only differences are the angle of the knuckles to allow either 90º or 45º usage, and that one has 4th as the offset valve, while the other has the 1st as the offset valve. Everything else matches (oh, except bore). Even the stems, buttons, and caps are swappable between the B&M (now Holton) set and the set used on my Kurath. In fact, the Kurath is 18/18/18/19 versus the Holton's 19/19/19/19 mm bore, so the 4th pistons are swappable, too. But the wear on them differs, so they do not run well in the wrong cases. They fit, but the action sucks.

Sorry if I was not very clear, and that I referred to your tuba by the wrong name.

[bloke]

Regardless, you may still send me your piston diameter.

I’m vaguely remembering that there may be three or four 3/4 inch bore possibly B/M-made old pistons in the attic… they may have come off of an E-flat something or other.

off on tangents:
For its bore size, the squatty Holton features a fairly large mouthpipe small-end diameter (which is normally contrary to my tastes, but does promote response immediacy).
I stuck one of those King old-school receivers on it that is in-between standard and euro…accommodates either. This is the size receiver they used a long time ago, as well as the size they’ve gone to again with the “new style”.
I’ve been using one of my own mouthpieces with this instrument (run-of-the-mill “Symphony” - with in-between shank size) which works fine, but I’ve been seeking something with slightly more zing but not as much zing as (even) the Imperial cup.
I think I finally dialed in something two days ago. I don’t know if I’m going to produce it, but – if I do – I’m just thinking about maybe one-piece brass: silver plated. It’s sort of a Laskey 30H/Schilke HBII size mouthpiece (yes: actually - finally - a Helleberg) albeit not the deepest - thing, but without the sonic and rim shape characteristics that I hate in those.

[the elephant]

Today I seem to be unable to cut slide tube ends flat and square.
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Today I cut six extended ferrules for the upper 1st, lower, 3rd, and lower 4th slides. I managed to cut the six inserts from the inner slide tubing just fine; all 12 ends are beautiful, and all six pieces are exactly the same length. Nice work, Wade. Well, thank you, Wade. Too bad about those six extended ferrules, though. Yeah, too bad about that part. Oh, well. Take a nice, hot shower and go play a nice rehearsal tonight. Great idea, Wade! No problem, Wade. Cheers!
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(NICKEL) SILVER LINING: I also managed to mismeasure and cut these six long ferrules about a half-inch too long. Tomorrow I will sit down and re-cut these six pieces — accurately — neatly. The work will be beautiful to behold. I promise.
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NOTA BENE: I probably need to get out of my house more often…
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[bloke]

Were you clever, you - like me - would switch back to B-flat, and then - retreating back to amateur status (as B-flat is synonymous with that) - most anything would be "good enough"...

...and a couple of other things:

> "Professional" doesn't mean "for money". Rather, it means all sorts of finger-pointing and "you oughta" lists of stuff.

> "Amateur" doesn't mean "for the love of it". Rather, it means "not very good".



I just felt like y'all Repair Forum fans needed someone to set y'all straight on some stuff, here.

[the elephant]

WARNING: Necro Thread Resurrection

I am putting this tuba up for sale as soon as I have it fully ready. To be honest: I'm not exactly sure what "fully ready" means. I do not know how far I want to take this. I might lacquer it (or at least the bugle) as others do not share my love for the look of brown, bare brass. I have a lot of small solder places to clean up. I need to realign one of the slides and think I will be adding two waterkeys. I need to fix the alignment of the bell/receiver brace, which is off about a millimeter, which bugs TF out of me.

I really *love* this tuba now. I have invested a lot of my life in it and have played it for sixteen years as my main tuba at work. It was *okay* when I bought it. I have ragged on Mr. Rusk's work in this long thread many times and I stand by those comments. I have turned this into a heck of a tuba.

But I am getting too *fragile* to tote it around in a leather gig bag, and a hard case would not be possible in the facilities where I use it the most.

As some of you know, I recently bought a used Yamaha 826. It is stupendous. It is also very lightweight. Prior to this, I purchased an outstanding Eastman 836, but it was not the Yamaha that I made the terrible mistake of trialing on the same day. "Just for fun," I thought. Nope, I *had* to have this Yamaha, and to get the last bit of money I had to sell a car and take out a loan. So now I no longer need my beloved Holton, and I also can't afford to keep it.

Once it is ready to sell (once I am ready to part with it, more honestly) I will post it in the proper forum with a lot of fresh photos that detail all the work I have done to it. The price will be about the price of a brand-new Eastman 836; it is worth it and I am not willing to let it go for any less. I can afford to sit on it for a long time until the right buyer comes along and decides they want it.

It is worth that price now, easily. It is just too dang heavy for me. It weighs more than Joe's old 2165 with the tone ring and the 6th valve. I hate selling this tuba, so I will likely linger over it while I get it ready. It may be a while before it is done. I want to play it on a few more concerts.

In the meantime, I will also be selling my Kurath F with four pistons and two rotors that I meticulously built. It is a pretty darned fun tuba to play. But I have that Adams now and it is superb. So the Kurath will have some major redesign work done and I will play it at work to make sure it is ready for Prime Time… and then it will go up for sale, too. Like the Holton, it is too heavy for me now. It is also too BIG for me and how I currently am thinking of my role in the orchestra. The Kurath can sub for my 186 very easily on anything that stays above a C below the staff, volume-wise, in even a very large orchestra. (From that point down it is still a big horn, but can't equal a CC in output, as one would expect.) There is too much overlap between it and the 186 and I don't need two F tubas, so the Kurath has to go, too. I will miss it quite a bit, but not as much as my beloved Holton.

I will start new threads for both tubas to share the work I do on them. Then the For Sale ads will go up. Not sure when. I am functioning *very* slowly right now as I had a pretty bad bout of COVID. I thought I might die two different nights, and very nearly had my wife take me to the ER, fearing I would be put on a respirator — I nearly passed out several times both those nights and the day between them from breathing difficulty. I got sick on February 2 and am finally testing negative. I am super fatigued and sort of out of it. I am also quite physically weak right now. I tremble and can hardly walk more than a hundred steps before having to sit down for a while to get my breathing under control.

But I ain't dead yet, as I am wont to say.

My wife had it only a day behind me, but never had bad symptoms; thank god, she had to care for me for about a week, there, when I could not get out of the bed.

I am on the mend, though; I get a little stronger every day. My wife is coughing a lot and is also super-fatigued all the time, but is otherwise fine.

I have surgery to remove a large mass of scar tissue from inside my nose. This happens in mid-March. Two weeks off the tuba after that, unfortunately. The MSO has already engaged subs for all my stuff. Then I have a lot of playing to do, and tons of home repairs that have gotten out of hand while I have been "on vacation" this winter.

I think the Adams might be seven or eight years old, and that the Yamaha might be 21 to 14 years old. I'm not really sure about either.

See y'all in the funny papers.

Out with the old, and in with the new-to-me…

[arpthark]

Thanks for the update Wade. You've been missed around here

[tofu]

Hey man best of health to you. I remember way back to the days of being a small kid when the old people in my life would talk about how having your health was everything. It really didn’t click in my childhood head what in the world they were going on about. But then you get to that point in life where stuff starts to happen to many of the people you care about and then you have that aha moment where it really hits home and you now “know” what those old folks were talking about way back when. Glad to hear you’re on the mend - we always enjoy reading about your projects - and quite frankly we all need some relief from Joe and his tales of the impending doom of all civilization…

[bisontuba]

Get well and be safe....

[Sousaswag]

Stay well, Wade. We’ve missed you around here. I’ve loved following your posts.

The knowledge sharing you’ve passed through your threads is invaluable especially now that I own that Holton 340.

Looking forward to seeing more on your old and new duos.

[prairieboy1]

It is terrific to hear from you once again! Your pictures and posts are sorely missed on our site here. Best wishes for a full recovery and I am really looking forward to more educational posts and photographs from you.

[bloke]

Only a few dozen people own the only six quarter C that's a true joy to play.

"That's your opinion, bloke."

bloke "yep, having played most all of them, and they're all fun to play for a few minutes - until required to play with other people, and then the rest of them are all hard work."

edit:
I'm really proud/glad for Wade for working out a way to own one of these.
Whether someone is in the best of health or working towards better health, (if 6/4 C) using this particular tuba/model is going to make things much easier.

[the elephant]

I just stumbled across this comparison photo of one of Joe's BBb 345 bugles with how Bob Rusk cut mine. This is after some lead-filled rebending, and some major re-tapering to the cut ends to make it line up this well. It was a cast iron "female dog" getting these poorly cut parts to fit together this well and to line up this nicely. The chief issue was the work done at the Holton factory: the top bow is over-bent; the ends run inward toward one another rather than being parallel.

The only crooked joint on this tuba is now where the top bow and third branch connect. I could not correct the top bow, so I had to work around it.

There are no substantive gaps between the bows within each ferrule. It is also much stronger than how Mr. Rusk assembled it. That same joint I specified above used to break open about twice a year, and you could NOT fill it with solder due to the huge gap he tried to fill with three rings of shims. Intonation is improved; a number of inexplicably weird pitches have been driven back in tune by doing this work. It is not perfect but it plays pretty darned well in tune, now, and the response is more even from top to bottom. (The tighter leadpipe also seems to have improved the low response a LOT.)

[bloke]

sidebar:
The Holton #2...(345BB "twin-spin" - old-old thread)
The upper bow that I had for it (which was so beautiful) was from an old Holton top-action 6/4, and - though really pretty - is about 1/2 inch (maybe more?) too wide for a 345...and I don't like "jake-leg" instruments any more than does anyone else (particularly when my name is attached to them), so I pulled out the best 345BB top bow that I had (no buffing/no cracks/no patches) and put my best effort in on that top bow. Were I keeping this still-not-completed Holton 345BB (and had never bought the big Miraphone), I would personally be satisfied with this (repaired) large upper bow...I have several instruments which would - quite frankly - wipe my C19-adult-children-propping-up debts clean. (I have two of three who may never be functional adults, sadly.) The thing is that I continue to get repair work in, and guess what would happen were I to tell my regular customers, "Sorry, I'm just too busy to fix your stuff, right now".

re: Rusk...I've never criticized any of his work, but yes: I've seen the same things that Wade describes.
That having been said, I played a York 6/4 (cut to C by Mr. Rusk) with several features of the cut (and other aspects) that caused me to look askance, but the proof was in the playing...intonation: just fine / evenness of sound: just fine. (I'm trying to learn to not prejudge...Maybe (??) just about the time I'm dead, I'll stop doing it.)

When Wade first (correct?) traded an Alex for this Holton with Mark, he was very excited about it. I had also cut a 3-valve 340BB to a 4+1 345CC. It was my first outing. It looked ok in pictures, and played "ok", but - with mine - the same intonation characteristics (NOT the best 340BB) carried over to the same instrument cut to C. Wade (if I'm remembering correctly...??) met roadside or in some parking lot, and I tooted on his (prior to anything having been done by Wade to improve it). I recall that the intonation tendencies (already) were better than the one I had done, so I'm sure it's now something that someone would be tickled to own (completely aside from all of the greatly improved build/assembly).

re: Wade's 345 bows config:
Many of the 6/4 Holton 345 Rusk cuts feature a huge "hole" (ie. large space) above the bottom bow.
(The York - referred to above - was the same way.)
With Wade's, the second #2 and #3 bow config (though still higher than those on the rare factory 345CC instruments) is much more "balanced" - as far as positioning is concerned, and much more resembles a factory 345CC than most cuts.

[kingrob76]

Out with the old, and in with the new-to-me…

I knew the previous owner of that 826, you got a VERY good instrument.

[the elephant]

Yes, I did. I just hope I'm man enough to wield it to good effect.

It is not as *barbarous* as my Holton (or perhaps I have not yet figured out that part) but it is *very* good with excellent intonation, a low range that is just wonderful, and a high range equal to my Adams F.

[Kirley]

I'm so happy to see you back here, Wade.
Long live the Elephant!