My Willson 3200RZ Repair Thread

[Sousaswag]

I’m just curious on what the previous owner did to this thing. I might not have bought it had this been easily visible to me.

However, I got the horn for W A Y less than it’s worth. It deserves some love.

If I’m right, fixing this won’t change how the tuba plays.

I’m waiting on my Tuono to get out of it’s spa day and then I’ll bring this big guy in. I’ll update you on what Mr. Hofer says.

[bloke]

I've done alignment work on Swiss F tubas that had never been dropped, just fwiw...

Rarely is it the case that some manufacturer's slides' alignment is going to be a completely dialed in, but I'm sort of referring to epic.

[Sousaswag]

I've done alignment work on Swiss F tubas that had never been dropped, just fwiw...

Rarely is it the case that some manufacturer's slides' alignment is going to be a completely dialed in, but I'm sort of referring to epic.

I suspect that *after* this horn was “fixed” after the drop/step/squish happened, whoever did the work also aligned the slides to the wacky angles they’re living in currently… Alignment is actually really pretty good. Hopefully it stays that way.

[Sousaswag]

Alright, it’s almost time for this horn to get “rebuilt” again.

I took it to Keith Polito and got a confident estimate today on getting the rotors straightened, rear tubing and bottom bow sorted, as well as some other miscellaneous things like replacing the stupid Willson linkage and moving the thumb ring.

I will NOT be refinishing this tuba *yet.* While I do like the idea of at least doing the bell, I’m not interested in having this tuba look perfect, right this second.

What I appreciate about Keith is he’s a tuba player, but also really knows his stuff, and talked me through what we’d do, what probably happened to the tuba, and how he’ll proceed in fixing it.

When I pick my Tuono up from Dana Hofer, I will also get an estimate from him as well just to see what his opinion is.

[bloke]

I would just hope that they do the neatest take-apart and reassembly of which they are capable, and dismiss paying to have it refinished (replated...as the overwhelming majority of these are silver plated).

Refinishing a tuba is a wonderfully effective way to suddenly be upside-down in it, and to assure a nice juicy dent (or several) shortly thereafter (much as with a newly-repainted car).

[arpthark]

What does Keith think happened to it? Smooshed and slapped back together?

[Sousaswag]

@arpthark yeah. I’ll try and explain as much as I remember.

Bottom bow - probably crunched. We don’t know how. Repaired, but cut corners probably to save money. He thinks when he pulls it apart it’s going to relieve a LOT of tension.

Rotor bend - we’re not sure. Sat on? Stepped on? Fallen on? Regardless, most of the bend is in rotor 1.

4th slide - Cut, possibly for intonation? It plays in tune fine, but something’s been F’d with. None of the braces line up where they used to.

5th slide - Not sure. Something’s up with it.

3rd slide - Outer tubes not parallel with each other, but inner tubes are fine. Probably screwed up on reinstallation.

[Sousaswag]

I just heard back from the previous owner of this tuba. Some quick facts:

Made in 2002, purchased at Army Conference.

Backed over in a parking lot. Repaired, pretty well. Will be repaired better starting in one week.

[Sousaswag]

This tuba is going in tomorrow. Here is what I’m having done:

Repairs:
Straighten bent rotor set
Straighten 3rd, 4th, 5th slides
Un-flatten bottom bow (it’s not as bad as you think)
Re-solder bad connections
Bend rotor paddles back straight with one another

Modifications:
Custom finger buttons to replace missing stock ones
Replace Willson linkage with genuine miniball stuff (same as what’s on MW/B&S tubas
Cut down rotax valves to lose the extra weight (Martin Wilk)

I am excited to finally get this going. Hopefully I’ll get some in-progress shots to share with everyone here.

These are also the first major modifications I’m having done to any tuba. I really like this one and want it to be just the way I want it. The way it should be, really.

Cheers

[Wu299]

Please keep posting the pictures after you've had the modifications done. Although the repairs are interesting in their own right, I have the same tuba (similar year of production too!) and am very interested in the results.

[Sousaswag]

Certainly. Keith has the tuba now. I'll post updates as I get them!

[Lee Stofer]

Sorry to be late to the party, but for those who are curious about MAW rotors, they do exist, and are a good thing!
Martin says that I am the first assembler of new tubas to equip my tubas with the MAW 5th rotor, made by Meinlschmidt
in Germany. Someone remarked that it resembles a tuba-sized Greenhoe trombone rotor. I can't speak to that, but I will
say that the rotor crooks are long and gradual, and maintain a full-round channel. The rotors themselves are full-round inside,
are lightweight and havd all of Meinlschmidt's best technology.

My experience with my 4/4 York-style tubas is that, with the standard rotor, use of the 5th valve introduced significant
resistance, but with the MAW rotor, the low register speaks very much like that of a much-larger instrument. Between the MAW
pistons and a MAW rotor, and being braced and set-up in the York style, this tuba really does play like a baby York. I plan to build
at least two of them in 2024.

[Sousaswag]

Took a peak at this tuba today when I dropped off my Holton for the second time.

It's now beginning to be in the final stages, just a few more things to do before I ship the rotors off to Mr. Wilk.

From what Keith observed, here's what else was wrong with the tuba (that didn't play badly at all!)

The bell: Was going to come undone from the bottom bow. Whoever soldered that together didn't do a great job as the solder never "took," didn't fill that joint.

Lots, lots, lots, of gaps. Poor tube fitment, poor soldering, etc.

Dents in the leadpipe (that we couldn't see due to their location), dents in hard-to-reach places.

Braces bent, missing solder, like someone didn't even try to fix them correctly, and just soldered them up.

VERY out-of-round tubes (bottom bow was bad too), mainly in the fourth loop that was severely messed with.

With all these problems corrected, this tuba is going to function like brand new. I'm curious to see if there are any pitch changes that come with this tuba being completely sealed up again.

And that's just the stuff we couldn't tell was wrong.

Bottom bow: MUCH better shape. Not perfectly round, but it's not flattened in the middle anymore. I'll take it!

Rotors: STRAIGHT! You wouldn't believe how satisfying that stack is to look at now!

Third slide: Was being worked on before I interrupted for an hour. It will be mostly parallel. The thumb ring will come off, and we will either fit it somewhere, or make a new one.

Linkage conversion: I believe it's done. No more finnicky, loud valve action for this tuba.

The only other thing is to work out the horribly bent fifth and fourth valve slides, solder this thing back together, and clean it up. I've also asked him to make some finger buttons to replace the missing stock buttons.

After that, I'll send the rotors off to Mr. Wilk to be "un-rotaxed" and this tuba will be DONE. Very exciting stuff here, folks.

[bloke]

Best of luck with the final results.

[Sousaswag]

This tuba is now (structurally) DONE. It needs some minor things to finish it up, but I have it home now.

The tuba is now, for the most part, round again, as many tubes had been completely F'd, and left that way by previous repair people.

The rotors are now perfectly straight, and the 3rd tuning slide is as close as it can get.

Several braces were replaced, as things moved around. Point is, this tuba is under no stress/tension at ALL.

What still needs to be done:

Un-Rotaxing. Unfortunately, Martin is booked up until next month, so that will have to wait.
Linkage conversion. This will be done at the same time as the valves, as it just made sense.
Finger buttons. Happening ASAP.
Thumb ring. I will be sourcing the latest Willson ring for these tubas if possible. I sent them an email.

There are some other things that may still look a bit "off" to your eye, namely the 5th slide. Look, this thing was run over. Some of the factory bent tubes have simply been F'd, and to fix those, I'll probably have to source new slide assemblies from Willson. For now, I'm leaving it.

As far as how this tuba plays, well, SO much better. The low register pitches now center and are easily played in-tune, and have that bark that I knew this tuba was capable of. I'd compare it to any of the big piston F's, i.e. 2250, 3200, Gronitz, HB, etc. It really cooks down there now, probably due to it leaking from literally everywhere.

Intonation is much improved as well. Weird sharp or flat notes are now more or less in-tune, which is great.

I must give a HUGE thank you to Keith Polito for taking this on. It took a long time, but mostly due to unforeseen circumstances. He did excellent work, and I am so glad he was even willing to do it. I know it was a lot of work, but I am so happy to have this tuba and now re-learn it.

Pictures:

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[Sousaswag]

Hey, guess what?

It's time to re-awaken this thread. I am FINALLY making the one mod I've been saying I would make to this tuba since I brought it home: The Rotax valve weight reduction.

Why has this taken so long? Well, there's only one guy who does it. Martin Wilk. And he's a busy guy. Recently, he finally gave me the go-ahead to send them to his shop in Indiana to work his magic on them. I popped them out of the tuba, something I'm really surprised I've never done before, (it was easy!) bubble wrapped them probably too much, put them in a box and dropped took them to the post office. They should arrive to Martin by Wednesday.

Why am I doing this?

Well, if you've ever played a rotax-valve tuba, you'll immediately notice that they feel sluggish and heavy. I would say for the majority of players, they probably move quick enough. But for those of us who are really picky about our instruments, who play a LOT, or who play a lot of technically challenging music, the weight gets old really fast. For ME, when I owned a MRP and a Tuono alongside this instrument, I immediately noticed a difference. Plus, you all know me by now. I'm really picky about how a horn feels to play, and how it fits my particular body (usually height), but in this case, my fingers get tired. That doesn't happen on any other instrument, piston or rotary.

I don't honestly know if rotax valves actually do what Willson SAYS they do, i.e. maintaining "100% as compared to the 50%-70% flow through Volume of conventional rotary valves. This improvement found in the Rotax valve is still in a normal sized valve unit."

What I CAN tell you is, yes, they're still technically normal sized valves, but that extra metal around the ports as opposed to the conventional "scoop" shape adds extra weight right where players don't want it. Probably extra drag, too. In typical Willson fashion, yet another design that's executed REALLY well, but not anything people were really asking for.

[
Here's what they look like. Martin will cut that extra metal off the sides of the port(s), reducing the weight and basically making them normal rotary valves. Will it make the horn respond better? I don't know. It's perfectly good as it is. I suppose we'll find out!

I'll keep you updated as I usually do. Exciting stuff happening this month!

[bloke]

The fake round-bore feature on those rotors actually reduces the bore of the passages through the rotors. It doesn't take much thinking to figure that out.

[MiBrassFS]

I once had an interesting conversation with the Kuraths. It was a long time ago at the ITEC at Northwestern (it started with coffee and progressed to a great meal and drinks…). We discussed long euphonium second valves and these Rotax rotors, among other things like braces, materials, etc. They seemed to enjoy discussing all the technical aspects that made their instruments different. When it came to the Rotax question, the explanation was that the added webbing (they had a German word they used for it that I can’t remember right now…), of course, isn’t increasing the internal volume of the valve, it increases the volume of air flow through the valve by reducing turbulence from not having the casing wall and the resultant sharp edges involved in the air’s path through the valve by keeping the path more consistent. The design was a result of a fluid dynamics study.

Marty Wilk’s MAW stuff does the reverse (and mimics a standard rotary valve in one area of the piston). It increases the internal volume of the valve in that one area by using the casing wall. This introduces a slight opening and closing of bore size through the valve as well as some sharp edges where the knuckles meet the casing wall, but the overall increased internal volume is supposed to compensate for all of this. Un-Rotaxing these rotors supports his MAW approach.

Interesting stuff. Which is better? I imagine that’s a personal preference. I’m looking forward to seeing the before and after in this thread as well as hearing our man @Sousaswag’s thoughts on the results.

The picture below, courtesy of Wikipedia, shows a condition similar to the Rotax valves with webbing smoothing the path and not involving the casing wall.

[Sousaswag]

You know, in hindsight, I should’ve weighed the valves before and after the surgery to really see how much weight we’re saving here. Oh well.

Once this is done and I replace the linkages, I think I will have eliminated all of the annoying quirks that Willson builds into their rotary instruments.

[bloke]

The diagrams are inaccurate, because those rotors are typical size/diameter rotors which feature overall diameters which are nowhere close to two times the diameter of the bore of the tubing connected to them. Putting the material on the outside in order to make the round holes simply takes additional passageway bore away from them.

Were it that the passageways were truly the same bore as the tubing connected to them, they would overlap each other by quite a bit. Notice the little tan football shapes on the outsides which actually take away bore.

Those giant diameter rotors made out of aluminum that they were sticking on Conn 88H trombones for a while (Lindberg...??) are actually "full" bore through them, but they have their own mechanical and other problems.