"Dawn takes grease out of your way."

Dawn is what I like to use.

[It is what is used to help save the lives of oil-soaked sea birds and other coastal critters after an oil spill devastates a shoreline ecosystem.]

I would degrease it, then a sudsy soap-and-water wash with a thorough rinse.

It is an acidic, abrasive powder or "liquid" gel/paste/goo that works really well on cleaning out nasty tubing after lapping or to remove pink heat blooming. It is decent are removing calcified crap and gree crap. It VERY CLEARLY differentiates lead (solder) from silver on a tube surface as they ...

My 163 CC needed 1st for high C and 3 for high B. Hight Bb was still 1st, though, so I could not use 1-1 in series where it had to be fast. I would just play the C open and lip. If it was fast it sounded fine, even in unison with the bones.

Current 186 BBb — 39.764" (1010 mm) *from miraphone.de Current 186 CC — 39.370 (1000 mm) *from miraphone.de My 1971 186 CC— ~39.75" *from my digitally calibrated cloth tape measure Every small-belled 186 I have bothered to measure has been about .5" 5o 1" longer than the bigger-belled versions I have ...

My 1970 catalog says 37" tall for O-99/4.

cjk wrote: ↑Thu Oct 22, 2020 3:11 pm52 - 50 = 2

The 3rd circuit normally drops the pitch by a minor 3rd; the 1st circuit is normally a major 2nd (or whole step). So your question generates from me a big "Huh?" Did you mean a 3rd valve that could be tuned from a normal minor 3rd to a major 3rd (like 23 would normally net — two whole steps)? I have ...

Sounds like my Holton 345 *and* my Alexander 163. I played both as three-valved horns and adjusted the 1st slides as would a trumpeter, using the 4th valves only where needed. The "miracle" of the Alex was that none of the longer alternate combos blew or sounded different than the open horn (even ...

I want this. I will PM you.

That there is some "Pure Tuba Sexy".

LeMark wrote: ↑Fri Sep 04, 2020 4:04 pm

I would love to be able to look at a brass instrument's taper, internal volume, and the locations of bends and be able to identify where resistance probably needed to be added or removed to strike that balance.

And so would a lot of major companies, heh, heh…

This will be my final attempt to align the branches of this tuba before I have it crushed and melted. Just kidding; I love this tuba. When I reassembled it the last time the top bow was clocked wrong next to the bell. I have no understanding of why this happened as I reused all previous brace ...

prairieboy1 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2020 8:53 pm Keep posting and keep chatting. You are a great storyteller of this tuba adventure!

Well, here we go… Chapter 1 I bought an exceptional 1971 186-4U CC in 2018 that needed to have a lot of things fixed, upgraded, or replaced in order for me to want to make it a "work horn" and not just a "fun horn". It played wonderfully but did not come with a 5th valve. All four rotors leaked and n ...

No pics, but good (for me) news! These old 186 tubas, having so many parts that were seamed tubes that were filled and hand bent, sometimes have oddball crooks that do not really match any of the others. I have seen an old Miredafone parts list from the 1960s for dealers (I *really* wish I owned ...

I am enjoying this, so far, Matt. I have always wanted a 601, but only ever played *one* with good intonation, and it was a BBb. I knew good CC versions were out there but never looked seriously for one. Then I moved on to the big MW and then to my Holton. I can't want to see what all you do and how ...

windshieldbug wrote: ↑Thu Oct 15, 2020 9:22 am 100%Wade.JPG

Nothing on the 'net ever dies...

Woo-hoo!

Today I got back to work after about two months off from this project. I started this next phase by trimming off the stub ends from the hydraulic blowout press from a bunch of parts, then deburring and dressing the ends. After that, I cleaned up all the press gunk in my vinegar tank. once that was ...

LEADPIPES: I got 'em. One of the nice things about this horn was that when I bought it there was a 188 leadpipe installed. It did not fit well at all, however, as it was bent to fit a 188, which is wider than the 186 at this point. It was sold to the PO as a nickel silver 186 pipe, but about five ...