fairly big job... and probably a good reason to not order these things in silver plate
Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2025 2:20 pm
This is one of the not-JP mainland China-made copies of Yamaha 3/4 front-action piston C tubas.
I just spent an afternoon taking this slide all the way apart and putting it all the way back together to dial in (dial OUT...??) the 10th of an inch discrepancy in the main tuning slide alignment.
They also wanted me to make the pistons stop whistling which was pretty easy, , but this slide thing involves a lot of disassembly and reassembly.
Here's the slide bow width juxtaposed next to the aligned outside slide tubes (aligned without un-soldering them) after completely disassembling the slide (including cross brace assembly)
...so yes, I had to diminish the width of this slide bow considerably.
The main slide water key one-piece saddle/nipple came off (unavoidable), so I removed the crease in the bow from underneath it when it was off. (That crease is slightly apparent - upper left - when looking at the super closeup picture.)
The piston whistling was solved simply by opening up the air holes in the two pistons (which were whistling) larger and rounding off the edges of the (now-larger) holes.
There were so few dents in this instrument, that I went ahead and removed them (typical bottom bow, top bow, and bell).
...They had no other complaints, so I didn't check any of the other slides.
This isn't Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, but I phoned a (local) friend about re-plating this slide.
I just spent an afternoon taking this slide all the way apart and putting it all the way back together to dial in (dial OUT...??) the 10th of an inch discrepancy in the main tuning slide alignment.
They also wanted me to make the pistons stop whistling which was pretty easy, , but this slide thing involves a lot of disassembly and reassembly.
Here's the slide bow width juxtaposed next to the aligned outside slide tubes (aligned without un-soldering them) after completely disassembling the slide (including cross brace assembly)
...so yes, I had to diminish the width of this slide bow considerably.
The main slide water key one-piece saddle/nipple came off (unavoidable), so I removed the crease in the bow from underneath it when it was off. (That crease is slightly apparent - upper left - when looking at the super closeup picture.)
The piston whistling was solved simply by opening up the air holes in the two pistons (which were whistling) larger and rounding off the edges of the (now-larger) holes.
There were so few dents in this instrument, that I went ahead and removed them (typical bottom bow, top bow, and bell).
...They had no other complaints, so I didn't check any of the other slides.
This isn't Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, but I phoned a (local) friend about re-plating this slide.
