Silver plating

[KingTuba1241X]

Thank you so much for the responses! It is more clear now!

I would ask again what horn you originally are wanting to do this with. Hopefully not a really expensive one! From my experiments all I can recommend is buying that same model horn in silver plate from whoever makes it instead of doing the refinish process yourself and getting conflicting data from a tuba board. I've refinished enough old horns to know you're getting into a mess especially from a beginner's standpoint, it will frustrate you and of course make a horn look really bad if you don't do it right. At the end of the day, horns resonate and play differently based on their metallurgy, construction, and finish. Some factors contribute more, some less. You must decide if the specific horn in question is worth it, and if it's a cheaper Chinese horn and money and time aren't a factor give it shot and learn how to refinish. Go bare brass and see if you like it, if not then get it plated silver.

[Doc]

@bloke, the “human in the loop” is certainly an important aspect of all of this.

It would be fun to haul out that trumpet playing robot and have it play a bunch of different variations on a Bb trumpet. Plating, bracing, thickness, weighted caps, all of it.

Put it behind a curtain and let a lot of people listen and judge in isolation. Bring a spectrum analyzer along for digital data capture and analysis.

Assuming these horns were built with at least the same level of care, knowing precision will vary, it would be interesting to see the comparison.

My gut tells me that differences will be minimal, especially in the acoustic far field.

But, the horn providing different (near field) feedback to a human player can make significant differences in playing.

With all of that being said, I don’t care for silver horns because they tarnish and start to take on an “onion-like” smell after a while.

yes...but there would still be a human factor: the judging

onion...hmm...To me, tarnished silver smells like sulfur. I'll consider your "onion" olfactory perception, the next time I'm exposed to that.

Hmm... Now I have to do an onion check on the 186 when I get home.

[matt g]

Regarding onions:

https://trivia.net/what-gives-onions-th ... tive-smell

[KingTuba1241X]

Regarding onions:

https://trivia.net/what-gives-onions-th ... tive-smell

Mine just faintly smells like silver polish over the years, quite less than other silver horns I've owned (that's why I kept it). Can't be over zealous with that stuff. Never smelled onions though, might be relief from the typical mother's or Tarn-X variety fumes.

[matt g]

Regarding onions:

https://trivia.net/what-gives-onions-th ... tive-smell

Mine just faintly smells like silver polish over the years, quite less than other silver horns I've owned (that's why I kept it). Can't be over zealous with that stuff. Never smelled onions though, might be relief from the typical mother's or Tarn-X variety fumes.

With the silver horns I owned, I was notorious for letting them turn orange and then black. From what I can recall, the orange phase was the worst of the smell.

[joshealejo]

Thank you so much for the responses! It is more clear now!

I would ask again what horn you originally are wanting to do this with. Hopefully not a really expensive one! From my experiments all I can recommend is buying that same model horn in silver plate from whoever makes it instead of doing the refinish process yourself and getting conflicting data from a tuba board. I've refinished enough old horns to know you're getting into a mess especially from a beginner's standpoint, it will frustrate you and of course make a horn look really bad if you don't do it right. At the end of the day, horns resonate and play differently based on their metallurgy, construction, and finish. Some factors contribute more, some less. You must decide if the specific horn in question is worth it, and if it's a cheaper Chinese horn and money and time aren't a factor give it shot and learn how to refinish. Go bare brass and see if you like it, if not then get it plated silver.

Yes, It is not any of my main horns, for sure. But still a good quality one endeed. Sadly, where I am located is not that easy to find used (or new) tubas (and euphoniums) at all, even more difficult to find the exact model I own in silver plate. We have good food but not many tubas here

Jose

[Mary Ann]

Thank you for your comment! The same will apply with laqcer and satin laqcuer?

Lacquer isn't a "plating" as far as I know, it's just a spray and I don't think it would affect resonance even spraying it on heavily. (Think the old King Eastlake Orange that can't be penetrated by 88mm shells ).

Walter Lawson did a test of one of his (French) horns w/ and w/out lacquer. He was a science guy; he put a scope on the output, recorded what happened, then lacquered the horn and did the same. He found that lacquer did affect the sound in that there were fewer high frequencies. With a horn, however, all that was needed was to open the right hand a little bit and the highs could be put back in the sound. If you haven't heard of him (RIP) he was an extremely competent designer, and I use a Lawson ambronze bell and a Lawson mouthpiece on my Schmid double. The bell in particular locks in pitches that were all over the map using the Schmid bell, and I had someone try my bell on his Schmid and get the same results....he was no amateur either. Walter knew the hell what he was doing.

[KingTuba1241X]

Thank you for your comment! The same will apply with laqcer and satin laqcuer?

Lacquer isn't a "plating" as far as I know, it's just a spray and I don't think it would affect resonance even spraying it on heavily. (Think the old King Eastlake Orange that can't be penetrated by 88mm shells ).

Walter Lawson did a test of one of his (French) horns w/ and w/out lacquer. He was a science guy; he put a scope on the output, recorded what happened, then lacquered the horn and did the same. He found that lacquer did affect the sound in that there were fewer high frequencies. With a horn, however, all that was needed was to open the right hand a little bit and the highs could be put back in the sound. If you haven't heard of him (RIP) he was an extremely competent designer, and I use a Lawson ambronze bell and a Lawson mouthpiece on my Schmid double. The bell in particular locks in pitches that were all over the map using the Schmid bell, and I had someone try my bell on his Schmid and get the same results....he was no amateur either. Walter knew the hell what he was doing.

Indeed, metals have a lot to do with it.

[Rick Denney]

Plastic tubas and sousaphones abound. The material in these is radically different than brass. The stiffness, which directly affects resonance, is maybe 400,000 psi (for the stiffest versions of ABS), versus around 18,000,000 psi for brass (45 times greater). That means for a given stress, how much does the material deflect? With plastic, far, far more.

Sure, plastic is thicker, which closes that vast gap a bit. But if brass is 0.6 mm thick, then plastic of the stiffness above would need to be over an inch thick to regain in structural stiffness what it loses in material stiffness.

And the density of plastic is maybe as much as 75 pounds/cubic foot. Brass is more like 530 pounds/cubic foot, 7 times higher. If it’s thick enough to weigh two-thirds of the weight of a brass tuba, the structural stiffness of brass is still about an order of magnitude greater.

And then there is the impedance of the material at interesting frequencies. Plastic is, well, plastic rather than elastic, and suffers significant hysteresis losses when vibrated at higher frequencies. Tap it and it gives you a dull thud, because it is damping most musical frequencies. It has much higher impedance at musical frequencies, and a very low resonance. Brass is quite elastic at all musical frequencies, which is why it rings or at least gives you a metallic clang.

Yet, if I play my Martin and my Eastman, which are similarly shaped, any observer would insist that both are tubas, and pretty similar sounding tubas at that.



Sure, there are differences in sound and feel, but both have a characteristic tuba sound.

Now, let’s compare brass and silver. Against brass’s stiffness of about 18,000,000 psi, silver is about...17,000,000 psi. In fact, pure silver sits in the middle of the range of stiffness of the various brass alloys. And silver is only about 20% denser than brass. The entire silver plating of a tuba might weigh 4 ounces, if it’s well-plated, and compared to the same thickness of brass might add as much not quite an ounce.

I would argue that for a tuba made from brass with a thin coating of silver to sound even subtly different than one made from brass without the coating, a plastic tuba would have to sound as different as a tuba is from, say, a serpent. But it doesn’t.

The same does not hold for trumpets and trombones (or horns), which may be played with a characteristic sound that includes the ringing of the bell.

I am not saying that plastic tubas are identical by any means. I’m saying that when people discount gross effects when arguing about fine effects (especially effects so fine that experts can argue if they even exist), they are wasting their time. And players, like me, whose weaknesses are themselves gross effects (in both senses), spending even one life minute or one nickel pursuing these infinitesimally fine effects are chasing moonbeams and rainbows, and buying “improvement” with counterfeit money.

Yes, I have chased moonbeams and rainbows. But self-awareness is not self-control.

I would also argue that the differences between one instrument and the next to come off the line will be much closer to gross effects than the effects of the coatings. And that makes empirical comparisons of pairs of instruments without large (at least 10 of each) sampling and blind testing utterly unpersuasive to anyone with a background in materials science or testing.

Which I have.

Rick “summarizing vast time-wasting discussions from the past” Denney

[matt g]

Sampling to approach some level of statistical rigor won’t happen.

Using a trumpet robot on expertly crafted trumpets of different coatings and variations of brass and silver to a blind audience of sufficient size, variety, and lack of influence would simply deny the argument.

[Shawn]

Sampling to approach some level of statistical rigor won’t happen.

Using a trumpet robot on expertly crafted trumpets of different coatings and variations of brass and silver to a blind audience of sufficient size, variety, and lack of influence would simply deny the argument.

Fair.
It'll never be perfect.
Is there a way to conduct an efficient "kinda good" experiment?

We accept "kinda good" all the time in other fields... pharma drug trials, election polling, traffic congestion projections...

[matt g]

Drug trials and election polls are kinda good. Usually the sampling is large. Issue with polls are biased questions whichever way they are biased.

Basically, with a mock setup you can deny certain conclusions based on the observed behavior.

If you’re testing trumpets as mentioned above, if the (isolated from each other and they can’t see what’s being played) audience yields data that has very poor correlation you can draw from that result that the construction might not matter all that much. You could throw a couple ringers in as well, like a trumpet built in Bb with Eb slide lengths And/or one with very poor solder joints to see if the audience agrees on those being poor for some reason.

But in terms of absolute truth? Doesn’t exist.

[bloke]

Yet, if I play my Martin and my Eastman, which are similarly shaped, any observer would insist that both are tubas, and pretty similar sounding tubas at that.

I would very much appreciate an opportunity to play on your Martin for a few moments, sometime...

fiberglass and plastic: My sousaphone (thank the Lord) features a large percentage of these substances in its construction.
There's a funny little way (subtly different, but perceivable) that the sound bounces off the interior of my fiberglass body - compared to brass, but I believe that to be related to the surface texture, and not due to the material itself. I tend to suspect that - were fiberglass branches interior surfaces sanded - that subtle sound phenomenon would vanish. Indeed, there are a few sousaphones (old-old) which featured very smooth interior surfaces, and I never notice that subtle/odd little extra sound with those...Though (being another make) I really did not care for their intonation tendencies, so...

The plastic bell flare...I like that feature best, because it (again: not wishing for any of my tubas to be percussion instruments) completely eliminates the chance of that annoying sousaphone "after-ring" (which is never in the key of the music).

[Doc]

Yet, if I play my Martin and my Eastman, which are similarly shaped, any observer would insist that both are tubas, and pretty similar sounding tubas at that.

I would very much appreciate an opportunity to play on your Martin for a few moments, sometime...

fiberglass and plastic: My sousaphone (thank the Lord) features a large percentage of these substances in its construction.
There's a funny little way (subtly different, but perceivable) that the sound bounces off the interior of my fiberglass body - compared to brass, but I believe that to be related to the surface texture, and not due to the material itself. I tend to suspect that - were fiberglass branches interior surfaces sanded - that subtle sound phenomenon would vanish. Indeed, there are a few sousaphones (old-old) which featured very smooth interior surfaces, and I never notice that subtle/odd little extra sound with those...Though (being another make) I really did not care for their intonation tendencies, so...

The plastic bell flare...I like that feature best, because it (again: not wishing for any of my tubas to be percussion instruments) completely eliminates the chance of that annoying sousaphone "after-ring" (which is never in the key of the music).

Since you mention that sousaphone...

What model is that sousaphone anyway? What kind of prep work, if any, was required prior to painting? You'll have to remind me who did the fancy paint job (the old archives are gone, and my memory doesn't serve very well).

[bloke]

My sousaphone is an early 36K (Elkhart) with a 1920's 40K valveset.

Nothing was wasted, as body parts were some that (as we've all seen available) someone gave to me - with no valveset included.

The 40K body received a donor 22K (short-action from the long-discontinued 6/4 fiberglass model) valveset, morphed into a 20K, and was sold to a school.

A body shop on "Presidents Island" (a peninsula of the Mississippi River in downtown Memphis, which is an industrial park and wildlife refuge with a hundreds-too-many-deer problem) sanded off the pebble finish, and applied the "chameleon" paint job.

If I ever take you there, Bill, I need to have the owner show you his chrome-plated Colt 50-mag six-shooter, which is in the top drawer of his desk.
Mostly, that business repairs and repaints damaged 18-wheeler tractors/trailers...and sometimes, stuff like firetrucks for cities (but sure: regular cars and pickup trucks as well). They do beautiful work. I met them long ago, as the son of the owner was a trumpet player in his high school band, and (before I left Memphis) they lived two blocks down the street from me.

[Doc]

My sousaphone is an early 36K (Elkhart) with a 1920's 40K valveset.

Nothing was wasted, as body parts were some that (as we've all seen available) someone gave to me - with no valveset included.

The 40K body received a donor 22K (short-action from the long-discontinued 6/4 fiberglass model) valveset, morphed into a 20K, and was sold to a school.

A body shop on "Presidents Island" (a peninsula of the Mississippi River in downtown Memphis, which is an industrial park and wildlife refuge with a hundreds-too-many-deer problem) sanded off the pebble finish, and applied the "chameleon" paint job.

If I ever take you there, Bill, I need to have the owner show you his chrome-plated Colt 50-mag six-shooter, which is in the top drawer of his desk.
Mostly, that business repairs and repaints damaged 18-wheeler tractors/trailers...and sometimes, stuff like firetrucks for cities (but sure: regular cars and pickup trucks as well). They do beautiful work. I met them long ago, as the son of the owner was a trumpet player in his high school band, and (before I left Memphis) they lived two blocks down the street from me.

Sounds like a fun trip!

Thanks for the info.

As an aside (to further hijack the thread), I've been considering a helicon for some time now (need to save the dough). I saw LTrain's Eb Wessex on the other site that is pretty tempting, and I've also played the Wessex CC (which I liked very much). Haven't tried their BBb, but folks say it's a good player, and the new price is not punitive. I'm not convinced I need or want a sousaphone, BUT a dolled up fiberglass sousaphone that was a good player would work, and it wouldn't have to break the bank. It could be a project of sorts. Regarding colors, I'm thinking either metallic black, a metallic candy apple red, or a pearl white (heavy on the pearl). Or some combination of the metallic CAR and pearl white. I have no idea what a paint job like that costs, but it can't be terribly expensive. I'm not sure if I would want the valveset lacquered or silver, painted, or if I even care.

Doc (wondering aloud)

[bloke]

probably (??), the cheapest way to get a fancy-yet-very-durable paint job would be to...

> do your OWN sanding off of the pebble finish...but you can't leave sandpaper scratches...as they might show...

> leave it with a friendly cooperative body shop, tell that that you're not really particular (regarding the specific color), but when they're painting some "hot" color one some car (ie. "Surprise me.") - and some mixed-up paint is left over - consider shooting it on your body and bell for an affordable-to-you amount.

[KingTuba1241X]

Sampling to approach some level of statistical rigor won’t happen.

Using a trumpet robot on expertly crafted trumpets of different coatings and variations of brass and silver to a blind audience of sufficient size, variety, and lack of influence would simply deny the argument.

Fair.
It'll never be perfect.
Is there a way to conduct an efficient "kinda good" experiment?

We accept "kinda good" all the time in other fields... pharma drug trials, election polling, traffic congestion projections...

Yes of course there is, by simply taking yourself...(and only you because it's your money and your instrument ultimately and ok maybe your wife if she signs the checks and has to listen to your tuba playing in the house) and go test out horns you are interested in and play them. Whichever one feels alive and resonates enough to you is all that matters beyond all the residence scientists and experts' opinions (and all the speculators whose opinions also don't matter like myself who doesn't have a degree in metallurgy or science or has anything for sale ). That's what I did. It took me almost a decade to find the "one" that gave me that warm feeling down my leg..and no it wasn't THAT I'd still like to try my horn in raw brass however just to feel any differences and nuances, though the raw brass smell gives me a headache.

[Doc]

probably (??), the cheapest way to get a fancy-yet-very-durable paint job would be to...

> do your OWN sanding off of the pebble finish...but you can't leave sandpaper scratches...as they might show...

> leave it with a friendly cooperative body shop, tell that that you're not really particular (regarding the specific color), but when they're painting some "hot" color one some car (ie. "Surprise me.") - and some mixed-up paint is left over - consider shooting it on your body and bell for an affordable-to-you amount.

Great idea.

Seems like a lot of dough, or not?
Conn Body and Bell

[KingTuba1241X]

a dolled up fiberglass sousaphone that was a good player would work, and it wouldn't have to break the bank. It could be a project of sorts. Regarding colors, I'm thinking either metallic black, a metallic candy apple red, or a pearl white (heavy on the pearl). Or some combination of the metallic CAR and pearl white. I have no idea what a paint job like that costs, but it can't be terribly expensive. I'm not sure if I would want the valveset lacquered or silver, painted, or if I even care.

John Noreyko the principle tuba in the Jazz band at Disneyland has been playing on an older fiberglass horn at work like this for a few decades. He's a professional player and sounds "good" on it. Of course I can tell it's not brass BUT, of the thousands of people that walk by and listen for a few minutes each day they would never tell or care so it suits him and the band and makes for a great strolling gig.
https://youtu.be/s_djwR-rgXY