That *OTHER* 1971 Mirafone 186 on My Bench

[the elephant]

Neither of them is finished; not by a long shot. Both are playable, though. I spent about an hour in the living room with both, playing material on both horns, sometimes starting with one, sometimes the other, using the same mouthpiece.

They both are very fine 186 CC tubas, but the cut horn is (as I suspected it would be) smaller/more focused/tighter/sweeter/easier to play. The low register on the cut horn (the one this thread is about) is a bit easier to access but does not have the knock-down power of the factory CC. If I try to hit a ff low Eb on the cut horn it will do it, but the response is a bit less predictable. (I am sure I will figure it out. It is not bad at all.) The factory CC has a low register I can hammer at need.

So my predictions were that the cut horn would be better in small groups (especially quintet) and the factory CC is the better orchestra and band tuba. (The cut horn would be fine in any large band as long as there was at least one other tuba on stage. And this is all pre-completion gut feelings. Everything could change once I have had both of these in the orchestra playing something a bit on the low, heavy side.

We shall see.

Anyway, here is where these two tubas are, as of lunchtime, Saturday, December 19, 2020, the year from hell. BAHAHAHA!!!

[Tubajug]

Beeeeeeeautiful!

[prairieboy1]

Such beautiful work! To think what you started with!

[bloke]

I have a question:

Does it only appear this way - due to the angle at which the picture was taken, or...

Did you leave a little bit extra (compared to the factory) on the large-ends of the mouthpipe tubes - perhaps in order to promote better tall-person playing posture ?

[the elephant]

It is probably the angle. You are actually looking up into the leadpipes in this photo. I *did* try to angle them to be taller, though.

[bloke]

Your 186 bonanza (three) makes me smile.

[the elephant]

I thought it was due to my youthful enthusiasm. Or gas.

[the elephant]

Today is "Create a Working 5th Slide Circuit With Junk I Have in Boxes" day! Woot!!!

I have two lower 5th slide crooks from Miraphone, as well as the outside dogleg between the upper and lower slides. I am not using a proper 5th valve, so the two slide ports point "westward" rather than one left and one up as Miraphone intended. The upper 5th crook is normally a 1st crook, but my situation dictates that I use another lower 5th crook, due to the one knuckle being pointed in the wrong direction. This adds about 2.5" to the length of the loop, and I normally have both slides all the way in with one of these Miraphone 5th circuits, so I had to get rid of that excess or my low F would be flat.

The four slide leg sets are normally 2.5" long, so I cut all to 2" (which I hated doing — removing material from runners is so much better than removing slide pull, IMHO) and I will shorten the dogleg and the Escher-esque "double knee" piece that I have to make.

About that, I do not want to pay for all these small, special parts when I can just make them here. So I took an old 1st crook, cut and ferruled it to mimic the actual part, and it worked out really well. Shortening the end that hangs down to the lower slide should be okay, as long as the cut is no longer than the needed quarter-inch, and the dogleg will be an easy adjustment.

I had to make all four slide leg sets from existing, much longer outer slide tubes that had been damaged and were in the junk box. I did this on my factory CC, too, and I spent a lot of time hiding this fact by hand-cutting the two decorative rings into the ends that I had trimmed. So all of the shortened slide tubes on the Factory CC have finished ends as they should, but *this* instrument is not getting that sort of detail. If I end up keeping this I *might* opt to get the correct valve and all the parts and install a proper Miraphone 186 5th valve assembly. But I might just as well keep it the way it is if it works and I keep the horn. I don't know yet, and I want to play this horn on an upcoming gig, so I need to get it finished.

I laid out all my parts and my diverse slide tubes this morning, noted all the alterations that would have to be made, and then got to work.

I stopped for lunch but will get back to work soon. Here is where I am right now…

The homemade parts will be the double knee bow that I have to make out of the 1st crook, and the little J-shaped piece needed to reorient the upper 5th slide tube. I have to shorten the two lower slide leg sets (on the left) and both ends of the dogleg between the two slides. I also have to make two between-the-valves ferrules match in length (since they don't and they have to sit next to one another). I also have to make four slide leg ferrules for the crooks. I have two more tube ends with the double lines cut into them, so the upper slide will get these since you can easily see them. The lower slide will get two blank ferrules. Oh, well. These compromises allow me to save about $300 and ten hours of labor time.


Here is the little J-shaped part needed to allow that valve's port orientation to work as a 5th valve. It is too long, so the slide will be almost touching 1st. The inside face of the curve bulges out (as most do) and trimming it shorter will require work with a hammer to keep the angle at 90º (which is pretty important). I also have to trim the long leg down to the same length to get the slide leg as close to where it should have been. This way, trimmed back some, will have the slide about a half-inch too high. All this length has to be subtracted somewhere else in the circuit. It is already bordering on being flat with both slide pushed in all the way, so this part needs some attention.


Here are my first two subassemblies. I like to clean/buff/polish/whatever in subassemblies since some of this stuff becomes difficult to clean excess solder or heat bloom once assembled to the tuba. On the left is the double knee that runs from the valve to the backside of the horn directly to the lower slide. It has its very short outer slide leg on it, but no inner slide. In fact, I only had three more tubes with the soldered-on reinforcement rings, but this is the bottom end of an outer slide leg with rings that are very close to the ring on the other leg. It is located inside the core of the horn, so it is likely never going to be detected as the fraud it is, heh, heh. Sometimes you have to make do with what you have. On the right is the J-shaped piece with its ferrule to the valve carefully matched to the one on the other part to ensure they both match when fitted to the valve. It also has its very short outer slide tube along with its inner leg and ferrule to the crook, That ferrule and its mate used to be the ends of the now-shortened 2nd slide tubes.


Here is the assembled (rather loosely, so my wife had to hold them in place for the pic) upper slide, the double knee piece to the lower slide, and the dogleg to the lower slide. It all seems to work, but I am still worried about this being flat or not having enough pull if it is not flat.


Another view of that area. I *really* dislike the outer legs being blank; it really sticks out, to my eye. I might fix that…

[the elephant]

I got the upper and lower slide assemblies completed. They both fit the spaces on the valve knuckle ends correctly and the dogleg looks like it will end in an acceptable location. Tomorrow I will cut the dogleg.

I still have to make the braces for this, needing one to pin the dogleg to the 4th branch, two to hold the lower 5th to the 3rd and 4th slides (inside the "core"), and one to the leadpipe from the upper slide.

[the elephant]

Okay, so the two subassemblies I made in the last post? The J-shaped one for the upper slide is perfect. And the double knee is crap. It was a great first shot, but no.

Today I sat on the floor with both 186 tubas and these parts and spent some quality time with a tailor's tape measure. I discovered two faults in the first assembly, searched my assortment of crooks, and found two old York crooks that would mimic the actual Miraphone double knee a lot better.

I torched the first assembly apart and cleaned up everything. Then I cut up the two old crooks and messed around with things until I had a better idea of what was needed. The two half crooks have different radii; I did not notice this need when I made the first double knee. I eyeballed the gap and then cut a spacer and a long ferrule to cover both ends.

Once it was together I did a test fit and it seems to be good.

One of the two York crooks had been sanded carefully to bare brass a few years ago. One was still the original 1931-ish matte silver. I had to lightly sand that elbow and then buff it until the silver was gone and it matched this tuba.

The assembly on the left? JUNK! It was made from an old Mirafone 1st crook that was cut and ferrule back together in this offset shape. I had to make a completely different one.


Here is the new one…




After cleanup with the slide installed…




Both elbows are from York crooks. The lower elbow is the one that was still silver plated.


Here is the full assembly press-fit to a spare Miraphone valve…






It looks a bit weird, but it also looks like it goes there, so my fakery worked out. Had I cut in the decorative end rings to the four slide tubes I think it would have been hard to tell that this was a homebrewed 5th loop and not the real one from the factory. These tubes are all still loose right now. Maybe I will go back tonight and cut those rings into the four tubes. It really does make a difference.

[Tubajug]

Nice work!

How would you go about cutting in the decorative grooves? Lathe?

[the elephant]

A lathe? Don't I wish…

The tools I use for this are a jeweler's saw, two of my Swiss files, my eyeballs, and a lot of patience.

I have done this to six tubes now. I had to add these rings to all four legs on the factory CC's two 5th slides because (you guessed it) I did not opt to purchase the new parts. I cut old outer slide tubes to the needed length and then added the rings so no one would be able to tell I had been that cheap.

On this tuba, when I cut it to CC I was able to swap out the existing slide leg sets to avoid cutting — except for the 2nd slide legs, which I had to shorten by .75" each. They looked bad, too, all naked like that, so I decided I would do this nonsense one last time. It worked well enough.

Now I think I may do it again, but I may have a faster way to get it done. If I decide to cut the rings I will share what I did.

Here are some old pics from when I did this before. This is the 2nd slide of this tuba.

Original length BBb 2nd slide inner and outer legs, measured and taped so that I have a reference line for my Dremel tool.


I have one that is finished and one with just the first line hand-cut. The trimmed ends are ferrule length and I was short two ferrules, so these were used at some point, too. I did not bother to try and cut rings into such short tubes, though, so they still look just like this.

[the elephant]

Merry Christmas!

This afternoon I worked on the 5th valve section again. I finally (no, really, I promise this time — FINALLY) Got the double knee dialed-in to work with this tuba. I do not think the genuine part from Miraphone would fit this horn without some modification. It turns out that my valves are a bit too close to the bugle where the lower slide tucks behind them. It is an almost impossible problem that you cannot see and that I do NOT want to have to tear the whole valve section off again to fix. I came up with a part that fits the 5th valve while clearing the 3rdh slide tube BUT THAT BENDS BACK TOWARD THE VALVES to allow the stock crook to stretch far over enough to meet the dogleg from the upper slide. There are four very important clearance points you *must* have set up correctly or the lower slide will be trapped in place and two rear valve caps cannot be unscrewed.

After four tries I came up with just the right needed angles and lengths with usable radii. I am GLAD that part is over.

I wired together everything to check these clearance points, and two are *really* tight, but they work, and that's all that she wrote. This gets soldered on tomorrow afternoon.

In the photos, I accidentally pushed the lower slide a bit, so the angle from the dogleg to the lower slide is wrong-wrong-wrong, and did not see it until the pics were taken. I am done for the day, so even though this has been corrected, you get to see it wrong-wrong-wrong. (You lucky dogs!)

Here are some pics. Yes, this is shorter overall than the actual set of Miraphone parts, but this is because I added 3.5" to the overall length by using the wider crook and the J-shaped part to allow me to be a cheap-a$$ and not purchase a new valve. Keep in mind that I have been remarkably cheap with this horn, where I have lavished stuff on the factory CC. The reason is that I have played the factory CC as my main orchestra horn for a year and loved it. To me, it is a proven work tool that makes me enjoy what I do. THIS tuba was a complete unknown. It had holes and cracks all over, and even without the damage, it might have been a bowser. I had to not only get it playable, but I cut it to CC from BBb, so anything I spent on this tuba could have easily ended up being wasted money. It turns out to be an excellent tuba, so I might eventually lavish some German-made love on it; it certainly plays well enough to deserve most of what I spent on the factory CC. Of course, pimping it out removes the novelty of my having hacked up so many useless parts to serve in new roles. As weird as my 5th branch, 4th, and 5th slide circuits might appear, THEY WORK REALLY WELL. I think there is value in that, itself. So maybe I will just fix the bell garland that I did such a mediocre job on.

The project to restore and pimp out my beloved factory CC 186 was huge and a lot of fun. But it was just stuff I have done for years. THIS horn, however, is a whole other deal. I have never done some of this work, nor have I ever done this much custom work along with so much big-ticket repair work on a single instrument. Not only was this project fun, but it was hugely educational.

… and here's that good hornporn…

This 5th valve unit came out really well for it being such a cobbled-together "kludge". I am not unhappy with my results.


The red circles are crucial clearance points.






The red circles show the homemade fixed braces I silver soldered together today. I still have to make two braces that pin the lower, inner slide leg to the 4th and 3rd slides. (I have to make these two for the other 186, too.) I also have to make one of the funny braces used between the upper slide and the leadpipe for the side that is close enough to use one.


Glad I caught this. I would not have wanted the very nicely aligned slides to have been under this sort of stress all night. That would have been bad. As it is, I need to recheck the alignment, now. Rest assured that I did fix this and that all the clearance points are still good. :-/

[the elephant]

The pic of the factory CC is from two months ago. It still had the 5th lever that I replaced. That lever is currently on *this* tuba, so you are seeing the same 5th lever on both tubas. Also, the upper 5th on the factory CC had to be installed temporarily crooked until I could fix the issue that was causing it to want to sit askew like that.

The pic of the homebrewed CC was taken today, and all the parts of the 5th slide circuit are held in place by friction and two bits of baling wire. The dogleg accidentally got pushed toward the body and everything looks a bit squished. The photos will eventually look much better as the other horn had had all issues corrected in this area, and this tuba will have the slide circuit soldered on by tomorrow evening.

The photo was to demonstrate why the homemade section had to be so short; the upper crook and the J-shaped piece that allow me to use the incorrect valve add at least 3.5" to the length of this not-so-long loop that has two functioning slides. So the slide legs, all four ferrules, and one crook had to be shortened to make up for that.

Anyway, please forgive the weirdness in both photos. The final products have decently aligned machines.

[bloke]

The difference in the large top-bow tapers is quite evident in the side-by-side picture.

It also demonstrates how the C version began as ~SOMEWHAT~ of a factory cut B-flat...

...with "SOMEWHAT referring to the fact that - in the designing of their two SEPARATE (ie. NOT a "cut") large upper bows tapers, in both designs it is made certain that - by the time they approach their identical bottom bows - they both hit on the same dimension/diameter...noting that the C bottom bows and bells are the "B-flat" bottom bows and bells...thus: the use of the word "cut".

Yet another unproved "theory" (again, with so many variables in any possible testing defining virtual impossibility to apply the Scientific Method) might be that the "mouthpipe" (and it's chosen amount of "choke" and "taper delay/denial") area mostly affects resistance, the "bell/bottom bow" area (and its shape) mostly affects resonance, and the "bugle" area (and it's rate of taper) mostly affects intonation characteristics.

My eyebrows tend to rise (as does the corner of my mouth) when people talk about mouthpieces and mouthpipes significantly affecting intonation characteristics. I have noted that smaller ones can allow undesirable intonation characteristics to more easily be overridden, but I've never witnessed either of these "repairing" an instrument's intonation characteristics (though - sure - an absurdly-large mouthpiece - which might actually begin to somehow become its own "bugle" - can ruin intonation characteristics).

<sidebar>
I owned an early-1980's bought-new 188...a so-called "Anniversary" gold-brass model (which I used at a sham-audition - during the time I owned it - in a western state). I would rate that specific instrument as a "dog". Later, I made its mouthpipe tube detachable, and - also: detachable, obviously - installed a very large-bore mouthpipe (beautifully factory-bent by Miraphone) to see if it would help "open up" the low range. It did not.
</sidebar>

[the elephant]

I finally got the 5th valve slide installed, so I got to spend an hour working this horn hard in the upper and pedal registers. It plays very well. I was able to find a slide setting whereby I could play using only the normal alternates for the 5th partial (and not every time in all keys, BTW) plus playing low 13 pitches on 4 and low 12 pitches on 3 and NEVER MOVING A SLIDE AT ALL. Others might not get these results, but I did little to now lipping, except for bottom line G, which sags just a bit.

I am pleased with the amount of education I got from this project, and the re-education was important, too, since the last time I had done some of this work was in the late 1990s. I really got to stretch myself because of the massive repair work needed, as well as all the cutting from BBb to CC on the same horn.

I am also pleased with how *well* this tuba plays. I now have a nice bookend to my factory CC. I think I will be keeping both tubas. But to tell them apart I need to give them names. I have been considering Lucy (factory CC) and Ethel (this horn, the homemade one).

Regardless, I can't wait to test these horns back-to-back during a week of Young Person Concerts with one rehearsal and ten performances. These have proven to be the best situation to trial horns with my colleagues. It is easy to get in locked in with a tuner and drone pitches. However, in the orchestra you have seventy, moving, breathing targets to hit. HAHAHA!!!

Ethel (the cut horn on the left) turns 50 in March. Lucy ( the factory CC on the right) turns 50 this coming November.

[bloke]

clever 5th valve config.

[the elephant]

Thanks. Yours was, too.

Though you used the same upper crook as I did, yours was tight to the leadpipe on the inside; mine is the opposite. That left you with a very wide lower crook and a LOT of length to remove to keep the loop in tune. Did yours have a lower slide or was the crook fixed, with a water key? If it was fixed, how did you manage to make the rear of the valves fully accessible? I scratched my head over that one until I looked like I had fleas.

The real problem was finding a tight enough crook for the J-shaped leg that comes up from the valve. After that was solved I was going to use one of the double knees from Miraphone but forgot to order it. Since I am currently broke and permanently impatient I made one. Because of a small mistake in valve section placement, I think what I ended up with works better than the genuine part, since it was made for that specific space. I am not sure it would work on my factory CC 186 as it is set up correctly.

[bloke]

My w-i-d-e lower slide was removable.

At first I was worried, because (even though it measured out parallel/coplanar) it was hard to pull...but
(well...) I FINALLY (friggin') greased its slide tubes, which (as they were pretty short) I did not even buff/fit to each other, because I didn't want to promote air leakage...

...but (simply) greasing the tubes made that crazy/wide slide work well.

I was sorta stuck with the wild/hinged-from-the-original-left-hand-saddle rig, because the 1960's-era 5th valve faces down.
I've seen where others have snaked something in/around/under there (from a right-hand thumb paddle), but (with no offense meant towards anyone who accomplished that - and I DO admire their ingenuity) I just didn't want to "go with" something like that.
===================================
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
topic: "5th valves"

I'm thinking (regarding the stubby Holton) I'm going to have to solder the .750" rotor and it's ENTIRE circuit to the dog leg and main slide large-side outside tube, and install all of that at once (other than bracing it to the instrument's guts). Otherwise, cleaning it up (not to mention assembling it - because I'm tucking it up in the turkey-cavity of the tuba - would be a nightmare.

This entire enterprise has been one long ridiculously liberating ("hmm...That looks pretty good, so I guess I'll do that") enterprise, but - at this late juncture - (well...) the thing has to be playable, yes?

...so I'll need to screw around with my sousaphone OR the kaiser Miraphone BB-flat to (trial-and-error...not trusting mathematics) determine the circuit length of an FF semitone (which is what I've decided to "go with", because I judge B and E (2-4 or on this instrument: 5-4) intonation to be more important than super-low D-flat and C intonation (or even "low" E-flat...which - probably - will be quite fine with oddball-5 + 2-4)

Don't you think you should make that 5th valve on that Holton B-flat a long WHOLE-step? After all, that's what you and all the rest of us are accustomed to...

to which I replied,
"...so how many 5-valve B-flat tubas do most people own...?? I've never before owned one, so I'm not accustomed to anything in particular."

[the elephant]

I spent some time today making some fake Miraphone brace feet.

I need some specific, non-stock spans since the ones from the factory no longer fit. I really don't want to cut them up as I might change some things back to "normal" and those braces would then be needed. So I am going to copy what I can.

I cut three sizes of nickel silver discs. The small ones came from a length of scrap outer main slide tubing. I also cut two medium and two large discs to make the two bottom bow braces that attach to the 3rd branch. I used some scraps from an old bow guard to make these larger discs.

I have some of the fancy, "sculpted" Miraphone posts, but some of these braces will have to be made from nickel hinge tubing.

Oh, well; these braces will be located where no one will ever notice.