You've probably noticed that I prefer to repair S-arm linkage vs. tossing it in the trash...

[bloke]

I've removed all the dents and aligned all tuning slides from this old B&S rotary valve tuba.
Some people call these things "model 101", others call them "PT-1", and even others know them by the made-up export name, "Meister Gerhardt Schneider".

It's time to get these noisy valves and linkage quiet.

Besides removing the vertical play from the rotors (mostly from - predictably - #'s 1 and 2), I took my largest dent hammer to the T-joints and beat on the steel heads until they (while still moving freely) stopped clicking.

Next, I had to deal with the warbled-out holes that accept the stop arm hinge screws.
On these tubas, they neither brazed in a bronze nor a steel insert; all they did was to drill a hole in the nickel-silver S-arm...
...so these holes were particularly oblong and warbled out - due to several decades of playing.

The white nylon (cost about a 50 cents from Miraphone) inserts are too large in diameter for the round ends of these S-arms, so I started looking around the shop.

I found some small-diameter black delrin, ran a thread die over it for an M5 outside thread, drilled a .1" hole through it (nearly all of the stop arm hinge screws - across the various makes - seem to use that diameter in the articulating portion), drilled a .175" hole (maybe not the absolutely prescribed hole size, but it seemed just fine) into the ends of the S-arms - using the warbled out old holes as guides, tapped M5 threads in those newly-drilled .175" holes, and screwed my little delrin thingies into the S-arm tips.

Unlike Miraphone, the B&S S-arm tips fit pretty snugly (VERTICALLY) into the S-arm slots, so the white Miraphone-style ones wouldn't have worked anyway...BECAUSE these inserts have to be flush, vertically, to fit into the stop arms' slots.

I hope it works OK.

I'd like to be finished with this tuba and collect the remuneration.
(It's been sitting, and I'm sorta weary of looking at it, and I'm sure it's owner is weary of not having it...though they actually just bought it all beat up, so they've actually never experienced "having it".

I need to put on my magnifiers, and clean up the "poop" (seen in the pics), but - basically - they're done.

Here are the or-it-didn't-happen pics:

[bloke]

This thing is really close to being finished there are just a few ping dents in the mouthpipe about 4 inches back from the receiver, and I still haven't replaced the rotor bumpers or the water key cork.

Considering that the rotor bumpers are very old hardened rubber and still need replacing, I think I got these rotors and the linkage (both which were quite loose and rattling) plenty quiet, and tight enough:



I didn't take any of the bows apart, but I removed quite a few severe dents from the outer bows and some pretty bad ones from the inner bows as well. Typical smushed-in vulnerable tubing on the big lower fourth valve loop and necessary soldering of the fourth slide tubes, which is common with these.

A standard shank mouthpiece only inserts about 3/4 of an inch, but it's a good fit and I believe I'm not going to do anything about it because even in a fairly chilly room I've still got a 1 inch of the main tuning slide to get it down to A=440 hz tuning.

These are pretty good tubas. I've never disliked them.

...a good bit of work. This one wasn't trashed, but I had to spend the equivalent of about two whole days on it.

It's not perfect looking, but it has a very good overall appearance and everything works as it should without being a percussion instrument.

If sold off in the future by this client, it's obvious that it's never been re-lacquered, and that all the metal is still here.

[catgrowlB]

You got that B&S 101 looking good
Same as the 'Sonora' and many other stencil names used for that model to be imported thru various music outfits.

The PT-1 was another rotary BBb made by B&S/VMI -- more open body, larger/different bell, etc. The VMI 103 / VMI 2103 was the same as the old PT-1, but with a 17.7" bell instead of the 19" bell of the PT-1. Otherwise, same horn.

The later B&S/VMI 'Musica' CC and BBb tubas sold thru UMI in the 1990s were pretty much modern/updated versions of the 1960s-1970s B&S 101 ('Sonora', 'Karl Ziess', 'Meister Gerhardt Schneider', etc) tubas.

All good tubas, and I also like the classy fixed up S-linkages

[arpthark]

I have one for sale (that is not nearly as pretty!). They are good horns.

[bloke]

I have one for sale (that is not nearly as pretty!). They are good horns.

I didn't want to take it any further than I did because I don't want to charge somebody so much money to work on instrument so as their acquisition cost plus the repair cost exceeds the value of the instrument.

When I have done that, I made damn sure that they understood they were spending money that they could never recover.

As it is, this is a quiet-operating well-functional instrument that looks pretty darn good and (hopefully, assuming they didn't get carried away bidding on it) they could get back out of it.

The fourth valve lever spring was a French horn lever spring that someone had stuck on this thing. Mrs. bloke has been helping me clean up my really messy room and swept one up out of the corner of the room that (a really vintage Miraphone nickel silver wire spring off of a Miraphone instrument whereby I replaced all four springs) nearly matches the other three on this instrument, so I installed it.

I also found that I had a perfectly matching iron curtain era B&S carriage rod knurled nut in a box of stuff in my sock drawer in my bedroom (where I store extra cool tuba stuff) so I'm letting this guy have it.

[MWoj]

Hi all!

That's my horn. @bloke, the horn looks FANTASTIC and I can't wait to play it! Thank you!

-MWoj.

[bloke]

Hi all!

That's my horn. @bloke, the horn looks FANTASTIC and I can't wait to play it! Thank you!

-MWoj.

It looks really good , but not as good as the digital picture.
Digital pictures nearly seem to nearly have an AI type of effect.
...On the small side of the bottom bow both on the front and back (both underneath the main slide connector as well as the fourth valve lower loop) there are minor depressions which couldn't the addressed without un-soldering a whole bunch of stuff, and adding to the cost. There's also some pretty minor damage to the kranz which I judged as looking better than the scratches would look had I to addressed those... So I tapped on the high ridges of those places rather than running them through roller shoes, as original lacquer in that area is pretty good.

[bloke]

@MWoj

It's 11:00 on Sunday night, and I think I've about done everything I'm going to do to this instrument, so you can pick it up at your convenience.

' funny how rotary valves get even quieter than quiet when rock hard ancient bumpers are replaced with new ones.