Holton 345 Redux

[York-aholic]

I was just thinking that we need to hear an after-action report.

Did the MTS fall out halfway through?

[prairieboy1]

I was just thinking that we need to hear an after-action report.

Did the MTS fall out halfway through?

First a health report and then the after-action report. Hoping for great news from both!

[the elephant]

MTS — It has a tiny amount of misalignment that I plan on correcting when I cut and install corrected length tubing to the 6th branch-5th valve connection. However, it is Miraphone tubing now, so it fits correctly and will not fall out. I think I may re-do both sides of the MTS and lengthen them by .5" each.

Abscess — Like the MTS, my huge abscess did not fall out on its own, therefore a minor surgery was required. I have been on massive doses of IV-only antibiotics, and I am hoping that I can move over to oral antibiotics, so I can go home soon. Looks like I will have to move from pills to insulin shots, though, which really, really sucks for me. Oh, well…



Thanks for asking, guys. I will try to post an update when I know anything.

[the elephant]

I am being discharged from the hospital in about an hour, I believe.

[bisontuba]

[the elephant]

HOME! And I'm such a tough, old bird I have a gig tomorrow evening. My sub allowed me to take it back. I don't think I'll be getting above an mf too often, but I played the two rehearsals, and I am sure he did not want to have to sit in and sightread such a complex gig.

[prairieboy1]

Great news!!

[bloke]

yeah...I tend to stay away from mf's...but I know you can handle 'em.

[the elephant]

I am still working on this tuba. I have not had time to finish it. (But truly, is a project like this *ever* really finished?) I added a spacer to the long 4th slide tube. I had forgotten it in the rush to rebend the leadpipe and get it cleaned up for work. To be completely honest, these spacers do not do much for me as the inner tubing is SO FREAKING THIN. There is almost no internal step. However, I cut, dressed, and installed it, and that is one more box ticked off for this project. The leadpipe is *okay* but I have room to lengthen it by about two inches, and I might try that just to see what it does. I do not like how far out the MTS has to be. I could also lengthen the MTS by one inch (each side), but that would be a lot more work. If I do that it would only be so that there is more overlap between the inner and outer legs. Both will involve a lot of work, but the MTS would involve a lot of disassembly and reassembly in an area that was very tricky to get lined up nicely. Time to poinder that for a while, I guess.

Here are some photos to gawp at. Enjoy!

I am about to take the "bloke-built" 2165W back to Mike. Here is what will probably end up being the *only* photo of these two "brothers by different mothers" (as they say) next to one another. I really like these two tubas and think this is an interesting photo for readers of this forum. The Holton is on the left and the 2165 on the right, in case you have not been paying attention…


I enjoy looking at this shot.


I am *still* not finished with this tuba, but I have been gigging with it quite a bit lately. It's working very well for me and has received a lot of praise from my colleagues. This was after a quickie hand polish job so that it looked nice for work. It was rather incomplete and not aggressive at all.


I did not use the Ferree Z-60 "Dent Machine" at all on this tuba. It still needs a lot of detail work to the bell and bottom bow, but after all the damage to the bow, I am pretty pleased with how it came out.


We are currently required to wear masks on stage when not playing. The strings and percussion have to wear them at all times, and we are spaced out. (This is a statement of fact regarding working conditions during COVID. It is not an invitation to crap in my thread with your anti- or pro- stance regarding masks, vaccines, or the virus in general. Please post that trash elsewhere. If you cause a ruckus in this thread it will be reported, deleted, crushed, and melted. Thanks for your cooperation.)



Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story" — HELL YEAH, BABY!


Is that really a 6/4 BAT I am holding?


Obviously, I call myself "the elephant" because I'm big enough to make a Holton 345 look like a 4/4 tuba!

[the elephant]

Great photos, @the elephant!

[prairieboy1]

Thanks for posting these beautiful photos! It is a great start to the day to see them!

[Three Valves]

@the elephant

We go to the same colorist/stylist.

I hope the gig was well attended.

[bloke]

slick !!!

The bell and bows appear smooth as a baby's bottom.

[Doc]

Looking great! When can we hear some samples of it in action?

[the elephant]

… the gig…

We have been very busy. I have rehearsed or performed 41 times in the last 60 days. Lots more. Then the Christmas rush starts.

[bloke]

I'm really glad to hear that you're busy working (as well as with health under control, Wade) and thankful (though not a full-time playing type of guy) for a busy fall, as well...

...I just wish that these same-number-of-dollars-as-two-years-ago gigs bought as much stuff as that same-number-of-dollars bought (prior to the incalculable money-printing) two years ago.

[the elephant]

I played the BAT tonight for the first time since the above post back in November.

I made a few minor changes, including a newly re-bent leadpipe. It is much skinnier with a slower taper rate than anything that has been on this tuba previously.

The original Rusk leadpipe was an 11" section of French horn bell tail. (I sh¡t you not.) His decision to install the 5th in the leadpipe on this bugle using this valve section was a very poor choice, as it forced him to use a really rotten leadpipe to make everything fit. The first valve slide on this valve set has one of those downward loops which makes the slide rather wide, and the location of the knuckles for that end of the slide and the leadpipe are very close together. This means that the 5th valve had to be installed about four inches from the 1st piston, and he wanted to use a .750" valve, so this meant that the leadpipe would have to taper up from the receiver to .750" in only 11 inches.

To do this he used the section of French horn bell tail and the largest receiver known to mankind. So that leadpipe was short and comically huge. The low F simply did not want to speak and the low register was just weak, IMHO.

I made my first leadpipe for this tuba using a generic one from Allied and I dialed down the hoot-o-phone effects quite a bit with a much skinnier leadpipe. The horn planed much better, but still had lots of issues. I made a second leadpipe that used a bit skinnier section of another Allied pipe, and things improved even more.

This time around I used the skinniest part of the tube that I could get to fit a Miraphone receiver. With the 5th out of the picture the 11" leadpipe stretched to a much more reasonable 16" (or thereabouts — the lengths before and after are not important). This allowed me to use a much more generic (and reasonable) taper in the pipe. But my first two were still conservative alterations as both reached .750" a few inches before the first valve port. This last one was a risky departure for me. It reaches .750" at the valve, meaning that it is still tapering as it reaches the piston set, like many F tubas. Further, I necked down the first six inches a little to give me a more straight run of tubing before the taper began in earnest.

Okay, fine. What did that do?

I have always used my beloved Sellmansberger Solo (one-piece from his first batch) because it helped this tuba have some clarity and helped make the low register work better.

This is the wrong mouthpiece for this new leadpipe. I was happy with the tuba back in November, but for this Star Wars program, I decided to try some new ideas. The horn, with this mouthpiece and the new leadpipe, seemed to have lost its gutsy sound. The low end was a bit *too* tight now.

I switched to the largest bucket I own on a lark and BINGO! This leadpipe with this mouthpiece is very close to what I want. I need to keep farting around with my larger mouthpieces until I find one that dots my "I"s and crosses my "T"s. My wife attended tonight's reading rehearsal and liked what she heard. Our bass trombonist loves this tuba now. (He always liked it, but he preferred my 186 to the Holton; this is no longer the case. He went on and on about how much fun it was to play next to this tuba now.)

WIN!

So I will use this mouthpiece for the next two weeks at work, then I will take a look at my Sellmansberger Orchestra Grand with the correct shank. (I had been using that piece with the 6-valved 2165, but with the Symphony shank, as that tuba really seemed to like that combo of parts.) I also need to try my Stofer-Geib. Mark Jones was using one of these in this tuba back when I got it from him back in 2006. Time to revisit this piece. So my current mouthpiece, the Stofer, and another blokepiece are all going to get a lot of time in the woodshed soon.

By the way, the current winner is a SS Kelly XXL. I really like this piece and used it on my 186 for about a year.

[the elephant]

Okay, an update on the silly Kelly XXL:

It works, it works really well, and I plan to stick with this mouthpiece on this tuba.

Also, it has allowed me to pull out the overly-short MTS to where I thought it should have been all along…

Based on the math, I wanted the MTS to be about 5" long, so I cut the parts and assembled everything. When I was ready to playtest the tuba it was terribly flat. Even with the MTS all the way in I could not get it up to pitch. I had to use it that evening, so I cut new inner and outer legs, cleaned everything up, assembled it, and then spent an hour with a tuner and some drone pitches, and the horn was decently in tune, but it felt unstable.

Yesterday I discovered that with the MTS out almost all the way it settles back into tune and is stable and HUGE in both sound and feel. It feels like a sonic brick being tossed through a plate glass window. However, ALL the slides are now in very different places. There are some new tuning issues, but the vast majority of old ones have sort of gone bye-bye. I can't explain why the horn played in tune with the slide pushed in so far, but it is much like the experience with a small, rotary F and the low C. On my particular Mirafone 180 F tuba, there was no way to get the low C to sound. Even others who were good at distorting their face and airstream to get that note out of such tubas could not get this one to work.

I accidentally discovered that — on that specific tuba — if I pulled the very long 4th slide out ALL THE WAY the low C suddenly became very accessible, even for me. It was almost as good as the low C on my Yamaha 621 F. (Almost. Let's not get too excited about this, now.) Anyway, I extended the slide and all was well for me on that tuba.

Fast-forward to 2022 and this Holton, and I have found that my mathematically correct MTS length was correct all along. I have a big concert about three hours south of here in Poplarville, Mississippi tomorrow night, and I am about to lengthen the inner MTS legs by about two inches so that there is that much more inside of the outer legs. That way I can play with the MTS hanging out that far without fear of it falling out. I'll leave it that way for a while, and if I decide to keep it I'll replace the outer legs on the valve section, too.

So the Kelly XXL, as goofy as it probably is, will be my mouthpiece on this tuba for good, and the longer MTS seems to be the last adjustment this tuba needs before I button it up for good.

I am liking this tuba so much that I may pull the trigger and have the bugle silver plated because I do not see myself wanting to change anything else, ever. So getting this silver plated would be "pure tuba sexy"…

[prairieboy1]

Hallelujah!! Pictures when that bugle is silver plated, please and thank you!!

[bloke]

nah…
Plate the whole tuba, and cover up those nickel silver tubes that you went to so much trouble to stick on that horn.

You and I have something in common:
Neither of us is particularly gifted in the dough department, right now.
Of course, if you only silver plate the bugle, you can still screw around with the valveset.
There are always things that it occurs to me to do to the valvesets all of my bathhouse brass menagerie…
That having been said, a double-action fifth valve isn’t on my list