Holton 345 & 350 Project

[the elephant]

I, too, have a Holton Revelation 52. It is in pretty nice, original condition. It is also nearly useless, being only somewhat better than one of the original, gigantic Dr. Young things.

I also have three Holton 12 mouthpieces. One is gold-plated, even. (It came to me as part of a trade, I think.) The silver one plays great. The third one has been nickel-plated, and it was then used as the sliding weight of a shop-made slide hammer (for old-school dent pulling).

I swapped a junky piece of mine onto that slide rod and took the beater 12 home. The entry to the throat was scarred up badly from the hex nut on the end of the brass slide rod, but oddly, it plays very nicely.

[bloke]

The entry to the throat was scarred up badly from the hex nut on the end of the brass slide rod, but oddly, it plays very nicely.

...stealing these carelessly-revealed acoustical secrets.

[tubaing]

I also have one, but just marked “52” and not Holton or Revelation or anything like that. It’s a massive, bottomless pit of a funnel, right?

@tubaing - when I did a so-called restoration on his very beat up Holton BB-345 (at his request) elongated the slide tubes on the main tuning slide, because the instrument was sharp natured.

The thing is this:
Playing that instrument with the supplied/stock mouthpiece, I doubt that it was sharp natured at all, but who's going to be playing one of those mouthpieces?

On my Holton, i just had you restore the main tuning slide to the original length. The outer slides were unaltered, but it seems someone cut the inner slides to about half length. So I ended up with very little pull until Joe replaced the inner slides. I wonder if someone took it to a shop because it was playing flat and thats what they did.

[Sousaswag]

This thread is about to get some updates...

Not a lot has gone on with this tuba for a while. Now, however, we have PROGRESS!

Here it is, body completely dent free and round, tacked together. It is as straight as this particular Holton 345 can POSSIBLY be. Just look at that bottom bow cap. So dent free it brings a tear to my eye!

[

Keith and I spoke yesterday regarding some tasteful mods he's been thinking about.

We're going to try to sink this valve section into the body as much as possible, AND pull it a little bit closer to the bell, ala 2165/Nirschl designs, so I don't have to bear hug the tuba in order to play it. More on that when it's actually done.

I am also going to ditch the stock thumb ring, and want to stick either a stock Willson ring on there, or ask Keith to make up a Hirsbrunner style ring.

Now, we begin the arduous process of putting the valve section together. If you recall, the pistons are a straight 3/4" bore because it's a custom valve block. Luckily, I have the vast majority of the slide circuits. Some just need prettying up, while others are more or less good to go. All slides will be well aligned, which is uncharacteristic of Holton 345's.

I'm also anticipating making a cut to the first and third tuning slides, since they likely came from a 3v instrument with those slides built too long. We'll see. This tuba will NOT have a flat second space C if I can help it.

Additionally, I will have a spare 2165 5th valve that I may throw at this tuba, because, why not? Obviously we'll need to see if it fits, but initial signs point to yes.

More later. Hoping this thing is DONE by the end of July. It will be one of the most badas$ 345's around.

[bloke]

By the end of the summer (repair season, which actually didn't end this last year...!!!) I've usually got repair fatigue.

I have time to work on my own stuff in the winter (except for this last year) but after going like crazy all the way through October and into November (until they finally stop tearing up their marching stuff) just need some time outside the shop.

I need to stop the house from falling in on itself, cut the weeds down from 6 ft to 1 in, and other such things.

Your (great!) pictures make me hope for the energy to take my 345 to the finish line this year. Got some parts that I needed (which prevented me from doing so last year)
The instrument was ill-fitting at the factory and they just mashed tubes against each other. I simply am not willing to do that (duh), so I had to get some parts that had narrower geometry so that things didn't have to be mashed up against each other in order to mount the valve section straight on the instrument.