A few years ago, I purchased a B and S Symphonie F tuba. When play testing it, compression was good, but after a first chem cleaning, compression in valves 1 and 2 immediately turned bad. It was likely that buildup of crud was keeping the valves tight. I am not sure whether this was malfeasance on the part of the seller, or if they were as ignorant as me, but a major learning here was to knock out the valves and inspect before buying a rotary valve tuba from someone whose reputation doesn't proceed them.
The tuba played really great when the symptom was treated (mainly by pouring a large amount of valve oil and water down the leaf pipe), so I decided to treat the disease. I first investigated having the existing first and second rotors rebuilt, but discovered that basically nobody wants to do that work, as it is time consuming and doesn't always get good results. I think Dan Oberloh will still do this, but his lead time is long and I am not located near him. There are also a couple of French horn specialists, but most are not set up to work on tubas.
I then investigated replacement of both the valve and casing. After calling around, it appears (please correct me below if I'm not right) that nobody in the US is set up to fabricate rotors of the size required for tubas. I knew that Meinlschmidt and a couple of other German companies do manufacture valves, but there is a language barrier. I then reached out to @TheBerlinerTuba, who is extremely familiar with these instruments and understood the parameters of the project, and was willing to order replacements for valves 1 and 2 on my behalf, then ship them stateside.
A wire transfer and a few months later, I received, packed perfectly, first and second valves of the correct diameter. I then brought them to Dana Hofer, who was able to get them installed. I will mention that there was some problem solving to do to get things to fit perfectly, so I wouldn't recommend having an inexperienced repairman do this kind of a project. The results were great! The tuba plays better than ever. Since it was made ~50 years ago, I'm hoping to get another 50 years of service out of it. Massive thanks to all involved, and I am grateful for tubaforum and the old place for having searchable archives with discussions about similar projects, it really is a huge help.
A quick note on tariffs: this project would have to be done differently today. It is currently not possible for a business in Germany to ship directly to a consumer. Previously, this could happen under the de minimus exception, which meant that any shipment with value under 800 was exempt from tariffs if it was going directly to a customer (the two valves were comfortably under this limit). This exception was suspended a few weeks ago, and DHL will no longer ship directly to a consumer. The shipment would now have to go directly to a business, and there'd be paperwork and a small 15% tariff to pay, charged on the cost of the parts (less than 1/3 of the project cost).
I hope this extra complexity doesn't cause projects like this to be abandoned, because the results were awesome! In the closeup below, the valves with the star headed screws are the new, the flathead are the old.
Cheers!
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