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arpthark wrote: Tue May 26, 2026 11:59 am


I think the trickiest part would be rerouting the 4th valve tubing since the 6/4 York has a branch of the bugle in the way:

@arpthark, I'll email you a picture or two of my York 736 which is an original 6/4 with 4 front action valves so you can look at that and compare. The only non-original part is that I swapped the fixed recording bell for a fixed upright.

@arpthark

I would speculate that a moving that fourth circuit around to the front shouldn't be much more of a challenge than when some of us decide that that upward loop thing past a King 4th piston needs to be addressed in some manner (which either calls for a water key, or eliminating it with a dog leg heading downward).

sidebar:
On my 32-inch tall Holton build, the reason I decided to put a water key instead of a downward oriented dog leg was because the dog leg would have made the instrument thicker front to back (as a lower #4 slide would have had to pass over the #3 slide), and I was having fun with (the instrument already being very short) trying to see how thin I could make it front to back - in spite of it being front action.