Holton 345 Redux

[the elephant]

I purchased the rights to it from the graphic artist who designed it in 2004. It was like $20 to use it as my avatar or any other digital medium in perpetuity. Or so I was told. I started using it after snagging a copy I came across. I liked it and believed I would use it a lot, so I decided to track down the artist and purchase rights.

I have no idea who that person is, and if they wish to sue me for making a little medallion from the image that is just fine by me. But I do not think this will ever be the case. Also, I am a very decent graphic artist, myself, so I can always gin up something similar enough to be recognizable without infringing if indeed my use of the image *in such a medium* is actually infringement, based on the original agreement.

For all I know, the artist is dead. This was from 2004, after all…

The actual image is a huge PNG file, the image being over 18" square at full resolution. The little image I have been using was produced from that at the old 80x80 size by our resident mouthpiece collector Ryan. I think he did that for me back in 2004 or early 2005. The first six months or so I used my own reduction, which had a bad case of the jaggies. Ryan was kind enough to smooth it out for me (antialiasing, I think).

[the elephant]

I started the cleanup process today. I have a lot left to do to make it look like it has been buffed, including some small amount of spot machine buffing ~ yes ~ but mostly it will be super-high-grit (3000 and up) wet sanding and then burnishing.

I got most of the ugliness cleaned up today. Tomorrow I hope to finish the valves and then chemically clean them out. After that, I can install the valves and see how much damage I did when installing some of the slide tubes. (hoo-boy…)

I am hoping to get all this done tomorrow, and *still* have time to clean up the three braces that have some exposed solder, and then lightly buff some of the bugle (around all the new brace sockets).

Here are some pics of the valve section after my Clean Fest and a quickie hand polish job to let me better see what is still lacking. Once again, I had to use my old phone, so the focus is not so good. But I am sure you get the idea. Note that I have not yet done any strapping. I won't do any aggressive polishing like that until all my braces are locked down at both ends (on the bugle) so that nothing gets bent.

Goodnight.

[LargeTuba]

Did you bend the 4th's long curl in the back yourself?

[the elephant]

Nope. I almost had to, but Miraphone saved me the effort by sending me the wrong part on an order. It turned out to be perfect for this job, so I kept it. It would have been brass had I made it myself. (It also would have matched the shape of the 6th branch much better, but using it was a handy expedient.)

[the elephant]

Some of you wanted to know. Now you do.

[prairieboy1]

Thanks for posting this!

[GC]

Somewhere I've missed what may have been obvious: will the final result be BBb or CC?

[the elephant]

It was cut by Bob Rusk in the early 1990s. It is a 1964 Holton 345 (actually, it probably was a 340BB) with a Walter Nirschl-built Böhm & Meinl valve section he grafted on. All his engineering was great. Much of his actual construction was not all that good. I spent untold hours re-tapering the bugle bows and branches so that everything fit together correctly.

I got it as a CC and it is still a CC. Thank you for asking.

[the elephant]

I have cleaned up the exterior of most of the machine and bugle, checked the fit and function of each slide and valve, then cleaned that stuff out in the tub. I lubed everything up and reassembled the tuba. I stuck in the leadpipe, which no longer fits correctly. I think it was leaking at the valves because of how I had to get it to fit for my quickie trial). I put in my original Blokepiece, a one-piece Sellmansberger Solo from one of his very first runs.

It seems to play well and is still in tune with the tuner with the MTS out about 1", so I think I am good to go for cutting and bending a new leadpipe tomorrow (or really soon).

I tested the horn as a four-banger. It lacks the 5th slide, so the 5th valve is not currently installed. I did not see any issues due to my having bumped the bore by half of a millimeter. Also, everything is the correct length. My 4th slide circuit works really well, too.

I am happy. And I am also very hungry, so we are about to head out for some supper.

Later, y'all…

[The Big Ben]

Would love to hear a toot.

[bloke]

Those mouthpipes are not “2165 large”, but are pretty large. If you are fabricating a new one, what are your thoughts about the taper ?

I personally find (fairly consistently) that those that don’t start particularly large - and wait a bit to get larger - sound the same as the big ones, but require me to be less of a muscleman.

[the elephant]

I just use an Allied leadpipe. I chop it where it fits the valves. The correct length for this horn happens to fit my receiver perfectly, as though Craig had intended this pipe to be used on my horn.

That being said, having it set up to be removable will allow me to fart around with "options". If Meinl-Weston had a better reputation for answering emails for component orders I would quickly snap up a 45SLP leadpipe tube and see what it could offer this horn. The length needed is so short, though, that I am not sure the narrower beginning would not have to be cut off, so I don't really know.

I plan to purchase more pipes from Allied (both sizes) to see what some draw ring work and some burnishing over a mandrel might do for me in that first six inches post receiver. I also want to experiment with some smaller receivers to allow for more drastic changes to the first six inches. This is not to develop some "seekrut weppin" leadpipe; I want to better understand what happens as the taper changes between the receiver and the 1st valve. (I can see this turning into a dozen leadpipes over the next few years, just because I can be like that, heh, heh…)

I have zero leadpipe juju. TIme to start screwing around.

By the way, I know that my leadpipe was leaking yesterday during my initial test; I could hear air in my tone. Despite this screwing with intonation, I got the impression that everything lines up better now that the Rusk slip-joints have been corrected. However, it seems to me that the bottom line G is flatter and that in-the-staff C is no longer sharp, but that low C might be sharper than it had been, as in the two Cs are closer to each other. Everything else seems better/less BAT-like. I did no work to the curve in the top bow, but that damnable G changed some, so perhaps (on these bugles) the issue lies where the top bow and 3rd branch meet? I re-tapered the first four inches of the 3rd branch and also made the top bow end fit the ferrule snugly. There is an unfortunate gap between the two inside the ferrule, but the thickness of the tubing there is not huge, so I do not think the gap is providing any batter or worse effect to the airflow. The joint is also crooked, as it was before because Holton over-bent the top bow so that it is more like 185º or even 190º — it is shaped badly enough that you can clearly see it in photos.

Anyway, so the G issue could stem from the outside of the curve being too fat, but also it could have something to do with the *inside* curve of the bow by the bell.

Once I have a leadpipe that is very similar to the one I am replacing I will have some fun rooting out any alterations to how this horn plays. I have three services coming up with the orchestra where I plan to use it. I am actually excited to get to play it again. I have improved it so much. I don't know whether anything will be fixed during this round of work, but that was not the goal. I was pretty happy with the horn, but the projection had fallen off, and I am sure it was due to the huge leak between the top bow and the 3rd branch that kept opening up. I got so sick of it that I tore it apart in the middle of the 2017-2018 season to try and sort the joint out. I discovered Rusk's "dirty, little secret" and decided to tear down the bugle and box it up for a future project. If it still failed to project like it used to then I will attribute the sudden fall-off of projection to my getting older, though this is not a problem with any of my other horns.

Larnin be fuhn.

Do you know of a RELIABLE source for a new, unbent/filled 45SLP leadpipe tube?

[bloke]

OK… So the short length defines that the bore at the small end is sort of large-ish, just like the factory one…
... Serendipity

[the elephant]

Ah, but 1.) mine is about 2/3 the length of a stock 345 leadpipe, and 2.) my valves (and the entry to them) are 45º and not vertical.

Mine has to taper too fast AND start out too large for my tastes. I can solve ONE of those two things, and by doing that the other thing will become more pronounced. The pipe I made for it before worked rather well, but I still want it to either start smaller or taper more slowly, but to do that in the required length would mean the second half would taper too quickly.

Catch 22…

[the elephant]

Of course, the solution is to put a .687" King valve section on the thing so the short leadpipe would not have to taper that much in the first place.

But that ain't happ'nin'…

[LargeTuba]

Of course, the solution is to put a .687" King valve section on the thing

This Stofer-a-phone (with a small bore) supposedly works well

So who knows...

[bloke]

I’m not sure if you knew this, but the widely praised 45SLP mouthpipe taper (which I personally believe is the same one used on 5450 and 6450) fails to achieve 19mm (as the allied pipe does achieve 19mm), so you could cut closer to the smaller end, let your large end be about 18.5, and end up with something not too different from those German things.

[Yorkboy]

FWIW, the original York 700 series (.750 bore) mouthpipes I’ve seen are a bit smaller than .750 at their large end, even though the port entering the 1st casing is .750.

[the elephant]

Where can I get a 45SLP leadpipe that is unbent, annealed and filled? MW is embarrassingly bad about answering emails to their dedicated parts account.

[bloke]

Where can I get a 45SLP leadpipe that is unbent, annealed and filled? MW is embarrassingly bad about answering emails to their dedicated parts account.

I wrote them off, post-Gerhard.

You can pull greased dent balls through portions of your Allied 'pipe (after it's mounted on the instrument, with bicycle brake cable) and alter the taper to mimic that of the German one. It's also a good technique for rounding slightly ovaled areas (due to bends).

Those allied pipes (being filled with pitch) already end up being soft (ie. easy to pull dent balls through them and expand or round areas) because you have to heat them red hot to turn the last of the pitch into ash, which can be washed out with soap.