Holton 345 & 350 Project

[Sousaswag]

Okay, the parts showed up.

In my head, here is the plan for all this:

I will be putting together one donor carcass that will be a bell-front model 350. These parts are currently with Keith Polito for assembly and dent work. I am not going too deep into this one as far as cosmetics go. It will be stripped of lacquer, properly put together, and dents removed to the best of the magnet's ability. I told Keith I'm not worried about the bow caps being totally dent free. This 350 will be a functional (huge) hopefully great-playing bell front tuba.

Once the 350 body is done, I will take it back here, and it will sit for a while, valveless.

The 340>345:

The big project. The reason I jumped on these parts. I will be pulling the valve section from this tuba, and transferring it to the bell-front tuba. That cannot happen until the 4 valve set is rebuilt. Unfortunately, they all have side to side play in the casings. This is also NOT a stock 345 4 piston set. Martin Wilk put it together. Keith looked at it and told me that he believes it's worth rebuilding, so I've contacted Mr. Oberloh for a cost and time estimate. Luckily, no slides are soldered to this valve set, so getting it to Seattle when I'm ready will be easy.

Mr. Wilk used a 3rd valve as the (now) 4th valve. From what I can tell, it's pretty similar to the porting of a standard 4th valve, so things should be pretty straightforward as far as getting the valve circuits made. This lot contained slides 1-3 that are already mostly together, and I have them laid out like that in one of the photos. It's missing a few little bits to finish the 3rd circuit, but as of right now I'm not really concerned about it. It also contains a bunch of extra tubing to make the 4th circuit. Routing that will probably be a process, but Keith knows these horns really well and has 4 Holton valvesets to compare things with.

Interestingly, in Holton fashion, between three 3-valve sets and two 4-valve sets, NONE are the same. Crooks are different widths, slides are different lengths, and porting is slightly different between all of these. Typical Holton. GAAAAAH!

Once the 345 project gets off the ground, I'd like my nice 345 body to be mostly dent free, and done the right way. Pulled apart, re-soldered better than new, and all rounded out again. I don't know about the finish choice yet. It will either be spotty lacquer or raw brass. I'm leaning towards raw brass, to be honest with you.

When all is said and done, I will have TWO big Holtons. One 345, with nice rebuilt valves, and one 350 with my (really nice) 340 valveset on it. This should be really fun.

Here are some pictures. For those curious, I paid $1,500 for all these parts. I felt like that was a screaming deal considering the price of 4 valve .750 piston sets, if you can even find one. I did NOT budget for a valve job, so, this may have to sit for a while. I will see what estimates I can get and go from there.

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One of these carcasses is mine for the 350. I gave Keith the other in exchange for sticking the 350 body together and doing some dent work.

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The size of that bell is ridiculous! This will be a fun tuba...

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Planning out the valve circuits in my head.

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Pistons 1-4. Notice, 4 looks to have been plated at some point in it's life.

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Red rot in the 4th valve. Ugh.

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Wilk-built casings. Keith was very complimentary of the work. He said it was done well and looks clean. Worth rebuilding.

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Other side of the casings.

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Play in the valves. Boooooo.

[bloke]

Even a half thousandth offers a very small amount of detectable wiggle, particularly when dry fitted and no oil. That's probably the typical fit of a trumpet piston. I think it's probably a good idea - with tuba pistons (and particularly large tuba pistons) to widen the tolerances more than that.

Dave Secrist would send me perfect short action Conn sousaphone pistons, but they were so perfect that they would only work absolutely dry and - when I oiled them - they wouldn't go up and down anymore. After that, I always asked him to refit tuba and sousaphone pistons (that were even only the diameter of King pistons) for more tolerance than he would allow when rebuilding trumpet pistons...ie. a matter of scale.

Some things that leak quite badly are any of those trombone f attachment rotors whereby a bearing surface is also the same as a tubing meet-up surface, and the difference in diameter between trombone inside playing slide tubes (bottom 4 inches) o.d. and the inside diameter of the outside playing slide tubes is often as much as 4/1000ths of an inch.
That's an awful lot, and that having been said I believe trombone playing slide tolerances have increased over the years, so that they still work fairly well when they pick up very small dents. In the distant past, my measuring tools tell me that King made the closest tolerance trombone playing slides which is why they work the nicest way out in seventh position, as the closer tolerances didn't allow the outside slide to dip down and bind, due to its weight.

[Sousaswag]

We’ve reached a problem.

So, I contacted Mr. Oberloh regarding rebuilding the valves, and through our discussion he advised that this valveset (which again was custom made with the 4th valve soft-soldered to the rest of them) wouldn’t be worth rebuilding in his opinion.

So… here’s where I’m at.

The bell-front body will still get built, but now I’m needing your opinions.

Try and find someone to rebuild this valveset, or try and find another 345 valveset instead, that doesn’t need a rebuild?

The issue with this one really is that 4th valve having a pinhole in it, and the fit of all the pistons. I don’t know enough to understand if the 4th not being brazed to the rest of them would pose an issue during a rebuild.

What say you, TFFJ? Try and rebuild these, or find another valveset?

[matt g]

There are posts elsewhere in this forum calling out other people that will rebuild a valve set. A few within the last few months.

[MiBrassFS]

Pin hole in piston is no big deal. Very shortly you’ll be able to fix that yourself. As far as tolerances go, once you put guides on the pistons, fix the pin hole, align them, and lube them, pressure check them. Buy some silicone corks from Amazon and plug every slide tube opening except for the leadpipe knuckle. Plug the exit, too. Blow in the leadpipe knuckle and see where you stand. You might be in better shape than you think.

If the grafting work was done well, the set is worth rebuilding… if necessary. If it wasn’t done well, it can be improved.

You already know where I would send it if necessary.

[Sousaswag]

Pin hole in piston is no big deal. Very shortly you’ll be able to fix that yourself. As far as tolerances go, once you put guides on the pistons, fix the pin hole, align them, and lube them, pressure check them. Buy some silicone corks from Amazon and plug every slide tube opening except for the leadpipe knuckle. Plug the exit, too. Blow in the leadpipe knuckle and see where you stand. You might be in better shape than you think.

If the grafting work was done well, the set is worth rebuilding… if necessary. If it wasn’t done well, it can be improved.

You already know where I would send it if necessary.

I’m sending it to Mark at the beginning of August to look it over and give me his opinion. If he gives it the OK, I’ll have him rebuild it. Fingers crossed.

[bloke]

Recently, there were two sousaphone's here. One was a 14K with perfect-perfect valves and the other was a King 1250 with pretty mediocre valves. The King played much stronger, much easier, and with more volume and clarity including the low range.

Brass instruments resemble plumbing but are not plumbing. It's not all about pressure and flow and all that jazz. It's about a defined column of air vibrating. Of course when connections become too loose, the column of air can get confused with conflicts arising, but it has to be significant.

Because they are more rare and they are certainly more rare in this area of the country, I haven't encountered any of the ancient Holton six quarter tubas, but the 34X versions that were made only fifty to sixty years ago, I've never encountered any that actually needed to have their pistons and casings rebuilt. I sort of wonder if it's because most of them were likely school owned, and we're mostly just torn up within a very few years or avoided because they were unwieldy, and the valves just didn't get that much use. After doing a tremendous amount of body repair and aligning the body parts as they were intended to be aligned rather than the haphazard way they were put together at the factory, all I've ever had to do has been to clean the valves and sure: I swap out the noisy original guides for those which are found on many of the Willson euphoniums which are nearly perfectly compatible. Also, as long as no one idiotically boogered out the female threads in the tops of the pistons, those that Allied Supply sells which they claim fit Olds and Reynolds (but really don't fit those particularly well) seem to fit Holton 34x perfectly, as well as being precisely the correct length.

[MiBrassFS]

I have a 1959 340 here. It does not need the valves replated yet.

[bloke]

I have come across a couple of stray 34X pistons which had plating off of them, but I tend to wonder if they were ruined by some idiot in the back of a music store, rather than actually worn down.

The last few years I've had particular trouble with two completely different makers of sousaphones newest instruments, and I suspect it's due to both of them having decided to tighten up their tolerances on their valves, without also tightening up their build quality. Further, their tolerances were plenty close enough in the past for good strong response.

The previous having been typed, an additional complication of sousaphones is that they get bumped around a lot, and "super close tolerances" and "bumped around a lot" don't seem to be things that go together particularly well.

[Sousaswag]

I appreciate all the insight!

Regardless, I still think I’ll send ‘em over to Indiana for a second opinion. That 4th will still need the pinhole fixed. I feel confident Mark will give me a straight up answer on what’s what with them. If they need a rebuild, so be it. If they just need guides, cleaning and alignment, even better.

[MiBrassFS]

Mark is a low ego, low bs guy. I’m confident you’ll get good info and results from him.

[MiBrassFS]

I’ve been pondering the valve added to make the 4th on your set (mostly because I have a 3rd valve and casing for a 340 here plus some slide tubing). I also have a dandy 340 sitting in my basement. Can I use my extra 3rd to make a 4 valve cluster? I don’t think I can. (I’m now amending this a bit. I’m thinking it is possible…) So, lucky you and I can just enjoy this 340 as is!

[bloke]

One of these Chinese factories was selling 19 mm clusters.

[Sousaswag]

I’ve been pondering the valve added to make the 4th on your set (mostly because I have a 3rd valve and casing for a 340 here plus some slide tubing). I also have a dandy 340 sitting in my basement. Can I use my extra 3rd to make a 4 valve cluster? I don’t think I can. I believe what you have is an added 2nd valve turned 180 degrees used as your 4th. So, lucky you and I can just enjoy this 340 as is!

Interesting… The casing on my 4v set has a 3 marked on the opposite side from all the others. Let me take a look at my 340 and compare the porting to this one. Pics later.

[MiBrassFS]

Intrigue! Looking your 3rd valve casing and the extra 340 3rd valve here, I couldn’t visually match knuckles to your 4th.

[York-aholic]

Here is a 340 valve set with an extra 340 3rd valve hung off the back (backwards so the 3rd and new 4th knuckles don’t get in each other’s way.

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[York-aholic]

Ooooh, that’s a terrible picture, making the bell look very strange. Here’s a better one. (Cat always wants to be in tuba pictures) Its Holton 340 lead pipe and valves, then Martin Mammoth from the MTS up through the bottom bow, finished off with a Holton 340 or 345 bell, which needed some definite trimming on the small end to be big enough for the BIG Martin bottom bow. I’m really happy with how it turned out. One of these days I’ll get around to bracing the 4th valve tubing…

IMG_0801.jpeg (116.2 KiB) Viewed 1519 times

That doesn’t look like an extra #2 valve posing as the OP’s new #4 as the circuit ports are on opposing sides. A #2 casing has the ports on the same side, one above the other.

[MiBrassFS]

Gotta be. The port between the pistons is still visually problematic to me because of what I have here. I’m fixing to liberate that 3rd valve and casing from this cluster and mock it up. I only have the third piston in a complete casing, so it’s all I have to work with right now.

Things I know: the tuba here is a 340. The partial cluster is from a scavenged 340 that received a new 4 valve cluster.

I probably should just let the poor 340 alone.

[Sousaswag]

I just recorded a video showing the 4v set next to my own 340. I will try and get it uploaded ASAP.

I’ve also got a collection of 345 piston set images to compare with. From what I can tell, what I have is VERY close to that of a real 345.

[MiBrassFS]

That would be terrific.