1971 Mirafone 186 CC — A Continuation

[York-aholic]

Your attention to detail boggles the mind and yet, is wonderful to observe!

[the elephant]

Today I hit a small snag that wasted almost two hours. Oh, well. That is about par for this course.

I installed the nickel silver crooks for the 2nd slide and both of the 5th slides. I had to rebuild the 5th slide circuit to correct the wonky upper 5th angle that was sort of forced on me last time I worked on this area. It was one of those "just let me FINISH" moments. I knew that I was swapping out the leadpipe and that I would make the two braces that connect both slide legs to the leadpipe, so I just left it so I could use the horn at work.

All slide actions are very smooth with excellent alignment that I'm proud of.

The last slide will require two new inner legs, so with the new crook, the only parts to be reused are the two ferrules. Getting them off of the two slide legs might be a problem. (I had a problem like that today with the 2nd slide.) The alignment *must* be very precise, which is not a problem it is just a higher expectation. I will also have to lap them in to ensure they are not too tight. The newer tubing seems to be a tiny bit thicker and usually has to be lapped or it is way too tight to adjust pitch on the fly.

I have a gig tomorrow with the MSO quintet and need to get to bed. I might take tomorrow off from this project or I might just build my new 1st slide.

We'll see. Goodnight!

The upper 5th slide is once again on the horn—nice and straight, and the nickel silver crook is on. The two legs are not even, so this slide can only be installed one way. The outer tube on the left is not fully on the 5th valve knuckle so I will try to fix that later when the valve is installed. (I do not work on knuckles unless the valve is installed in the casing.)


The 2nd slide gave me some problems because the ferrules would *not* come off of the crook. All the others so far have come apart correctly, with the ferrule staying on the inner leg. This wasted an hour and a half because I did not want to have to destroy the old 2nd crook. That did not work out, so I had to cut it up, peel the inner bits out of the ferrules, and re-round them as needed. The pull ring "cap" came off nicely and fit the new crook perfectly; it had no damage and looked just about brand new.


From shallow to deep, the 4th, lower 5th, and 3rd slides all have their new crooks. Miraphone is dead consistent in many things but has not always been so. But I have swapped over six of the seven slide crooks and so far all have fit *exactly* like the 49-year-old ones they replace. Again, like yesterday, I only did some basic cleanup with the buffer or polish to get the worst of the mess out of my way. It all will look pretty decent in the end.


Here are both of the 5th slides. I had to shift the brace where that mess is, and I did not want to waste time removing it and cleaning up the old solder. I heated it and tapped it over a bit. Overall it went well, but right at the end, this blob shot out when I pressed down on the brace to ensure it was snug to the branch. Oh, well…

[Casca Grossa]

I love the look of the nickle silver

[York-aholic]

I love the look of the nickle silver

Agree, the increased amount of Nickel Silver makes a really nice contrast against the brass.

[the elephant]

The "Great Nickel Silver PimpFest of 2020" is almost over. I had a gig this morning so I had to limit my work to something I could complete, clean up, and put away in only three hours.

• separate old bell/top bow brace plates
• disassemble 1st slide
• cut and dress two new slide legs
• build and align new 1st slide
• buff and lap new 1st slide
• clean up valve section mess a bit
• evaluate valve section angle, make final plans

Here's the HornPorn…

[LargeTuba]

I've always wanted to try and nickel plate some stuff at home. I bet it wouldn't turn out as shiny as the Miraphone parts.

Amazing work!

[bloke]

stupid question:

Is this the completed one - pulled back apart, or is this the second one?

[the elephant]

It is the factory CC and not the one I cut. I used it on some gigs recently and now can get back to finishing it. (It is a real player, too.) Other than the new leadpipe, the rest of the work is either cosmetic, alignment of outer branches, or cleanup.

The other horn will get its own thread at some point.

[York-aholic]

stupid question:

Is this the completed one - pulled back apart, or is this the second one?

Not so stupid a question (I hope)

I was getting confused, too, as to which of the two Miraphon tu-bas this was. I’ve been enjoying reading the thread though, regardless of which witch is which.

[the elephant]

Well, if the other one comes out well then it won't matter which thread this is.



The very first statement in this thread is below…

Okay, so I have been salvaging my old TN thread on the two 186 tubas. One day (I hope) it will be refined and cleaned up enough to post it as a PDF file for anyone who wants to read it. For now, it is unavailable, so this thread will be ONLY about the CC tuba. The BBb 186 will have its own thread.

When I talk about them, the factory CC is *my* tuba, my main work horn in the orchestra. It is always the horn I am being very careful with, cosmetically. The other horn is a wall-hanger BBb with many holes and cracks in the bell flare and the two outer branches. I have cut it to CC, but I usually still call it a BBb. Whatever. It is an experimental mule. I have never even played it as it was sold to me as a parts horn to provide me with stuff for the other 186. After messing with it I decided to try and fix it up.

I guess I need to give these horns names. Ugh… I know it's confusing. Sorry. The two projects are absolutely intertwined and are being worked on at the same time.

Wouldn't it be a hoot if the wall hanger BBb I hacked up to play a step higher ended up being the better of the two? BAHHAHA!!!

[York-aholic]

The very first statement in this thread is below…

Okay, so I have been salvaging my old TN thread on the two 186 tubas. One day (I hope) it will be refined and cleaned up enough to post it as a PDF file for anyone who wants to read it. For now, it is unavailable, so this thread will be ONLY about the CC tuba. The BBb 186 will have its own thread.

When I talk about them, the factory CC is *my* tuba, my main work horn in the orchestra.

Yeah, but this thread started 2 weeks ago. You can’t expect my memory to stretch back THAT far. Heck, when you mentioned “the factory CC” my brain started thinking of Holton 345s and ‘I’m positive Elephant’s 345 is a Rusk cut’...

[the elephant]

HA!

Actually, this thread is two years old and very long. It died at TN and I was encouraged to continue it here as I continued the build.

[bloke]

[the elephant]

I have actually been pretty busy this past week with five BQ gigs. The weather has been crappy when I can go outside to work, and when it is nice I am at the stupid gig. Then, when I get home it is dark and the temp is too low to sit out there for very long.

So this week has been a real bust, 186-project-wise.



I managed to get motivated to take advantage of the 69º weather to get in about two hours before sunset and the onset of the evening coolness.

All I did was boring, small things, mostly cleaning up some messes with my 2" handheld air buffer. So yeah, the worst stuff is now cleaned up to the point that I can finish with the Dremel or just handwork, like strapping/ragging.

The *real* things I got done were to move the 5th bracket up the 1st slide tube by 5 mm so the linkage rod runs parallel to the other four rods. I dislike that uphill/downhill look on some of these horns, and it's not like I don't have enough time to do it the way I want.

I also went ahead and soldered on the water key bracket. "Mo bettah."

I created a component for an experiment. I do not like that long pin brace between the bell and top bow. Sorry, Miraphone, but it looks really weak to me. Just like the 5th lever bracket, I decided to overbuild this connection point.

Because we all know that overengineered is "better"… HAHAHA!!!

Okay, so — no, we don't. But I like beefily built horns and not some fragile toy.

I decided to re-use the original bell-to-top bow brace, which is two plates of nickel silver that are silver soldered together directly. This gives a gap between the two large, brass parts of about 2 mm. For my custom leadpipe to fit properly, I need this gap to be about 7 mm and means that a 6 mm (±) post between the two plates is needed. I have a Miraphone brace that has this exact span, but I need it elsewhere on the horn. (I had been using it but I want it to go back to where it used to live.)

I opted to use an inch of 10 mm brass rod stock. I cut it, rounded the ends some, then machined flats opposite each other until it was 5 mm wide. (Whoops. Juuuuust a bit too much. Oh, well.) The brace came out pretty good. It was a little damaged and I did not bother to clean that up, so I may regret that when I have to fit the bell foot to its new home. We shall see.

Here are some pics. Ciao, y'all…

The worst of the mess I made was in this area. It is getting better looking. I will need to hit some small spots again before I am through, though.


The water key is back on the horn. I have a little bit to clean up, here, but it looks pretty good as it is right now.


Same situation here with the 5th lever bracket — nearly cleaned up, but not quite. You can see the foot I added to the Miraphone part to keep it from snapping off the slide tube, which occasionally happens with this design. What I did to it made it much stronger. I built it to be off-center (up and down) on purpose. Then, once I had it installed, that purpose became a nonissue. But it is staying like that. I am NOT taking apart small parts that are silver soldered together. I hate doing that sort of grunt work.


Here is my modified bell-to-top bow brace. This looks cheesy, but it will not be all that visible and it is *much* stronger than what I was using. It is essentially the exact, same joint, but with a brass plug between the plates using the same contact patch. It sets the bell away from the top bow correctly for my leadpipe and will be just as strong as the original joint.


Another angle of the adjusted brace…

[prairieboy1]

Such meticulous work. Keep posting your informative text and great pictures!

[York-aholic]

Such meticulous work. Keep posting your informative text and great pictures!

[the elephant]

I spent this past week cleaning up the messes in the two 186 valve sections. I have already play-tested this tuba, and it is apart right now for some corrective work. I tested the BBb 186 valve section, completed now as a CC horn, using the known-good bell and bottom bow of this tuba. It worked out really well, so any faults in that tuba will be easier to track down since only the bell and bottom bow have not been tested.

Finished with that, I completed the valve section for this tuba (the factory CC) tonight. It is just about how I want it. I was having a bit of dragging in the 2nd valve but quickly discovered that the LockTite on the linkage did not hold; it had rotated just a little bit away from true. I fixed that and now it works great. I will go back later and superglue all 20 Minibal links on the two horns to their rods to avoid this in the future.

Here are some pics.

[the elephant]

Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I was trying to very quickly warm up. Considering this, I would rate this as "not overly embarrassing".

Note that I only moved the slide once, to pull it out a bit as it was generally sharp; no "pogo-sticking" was done. I only used alternates for D and E in the flat 5th partial. Bottom line G was played open. I still need to work out some little pitch issues below the staff, but otherwise, this tuba plays VERY well. (It has a nickel silver 188 leadpipe that was bent to fit this tuba.)

[the elephant]

I have not posted about this tuba in a long time, but it was never fully finished. I am about to do that. Above is a short video of me warming up on it. I normally arrive at a gig venue between 30 to 60 minutes early to allow for parking, walking (which takes me longer now than it used to, unfortunately), setting up all my junk, fully warming up, and then I have to "pay the rent" due on the coffee I quaffed on the hour-long commute into Jackson (if you get my drift(.

For this rather big gig, I arrived very late due to a dead cow blocking Hwy 49 into town. They had all sorts of emergency vehicles blocking everything. The cow was screaming in pain and they shot it and then had to clear the roadway. I was like five cars back and they would not let anyone pass until the animal had been put down.

So I arrived only 15 minutes before the downbeat. I parked, fairly RAN my fat butt the two blocks to the door, set up, and then managed only five minutes of playing as a warmup. When this happens I try to buzz in the car as much as possible. (I drive only manual trannys, so sometimes I cannot spare a hand to hold the mouthpiece.) Then I play a long-tone C scale from in the staff to pedal, and one short vocalise and that is it. On this day I happened to have my phone sitting there, so I thought to record my warmup to watch my jaw issue to see if I had improved it any.

I posted this some time back, but I thought it was in this specific thread about this specific tuba. I was wrong, so here it is again, but now in the correct place. I will start updating this again when I get back to work on the horn.

I have some braces I *still* have not installed, and I *still* have not cleaned up my mess. The horn plays so well that none of that catches my attention when I am at work. In short, I just forget that I need to do this stuff.

I think I may start on the cleanup of some of the exposed solder today. Braces tomorrow, maybe? Weather permitting, I'll give it a go.

I hope to have this thread permanently wrapped up very soon, perhaps by the end of Spring Break when I am finished with my Kurath project.

See you soon, folks!

Most recent photo, taken just after the video was made…


The horn has many spots with solder mess that has not yet been cleaned up, like here on the receiver brace…


Here we have U.S. Senator John Blutarsky posing with my 186 at a recent gig.


"WAS IT OVER WHEN THE GERMANS BOMBED PEARL HARBOR?"
(It has been posited that Bluto Blutarsky was based on Ted Kennedy…)

[hrender]

Man, you sound good on that.