Posted by Man Needs An Answer! on February 29, 2000 at 22:07:50:
My high school is sort of in the dark ages when it comes to buying new tubas, and we currently have two 3-valve BBb Yamahas from the early 70's as well as a few other junkers. However, that is not my point. The first valve on one of the Yamahas had the stem broken off(somewhere along the lines of public school playing) and after several pretty shady attempts to be fixed by the local band instrument repairmen, the valve is completely stripped and is unable to be rethreaded for a new stem. I mean this guy soldered it back into an empty hole in the top of the valve only to have it break off within a week of getting it back!!! It was really cheap. Well, after a long time of begging and pleading w/our band director, he finally ordered a new valve for this horn. We got it back a few weeks later, low and behold, IT DIDN'T PLAY!!! It had that sound that a sousaphone makes when you get a big hole in the side of the fiberglass. I took the valve out and it was about 1/2 inch shorter than the rest. I took it back to the band director to show him, and he reluctantly took it back and it was sent in again. Well, a couple days later, the same horn came back and the guy claimed you couldn't buy a new valve that would fit this horn, we had to keep this one. Then my band director proceeded by giving me an envelope which contained several valve pads, and he said the repairman said to add and subtract these pads until the hole in the valves line up with the structure of the horn. To me, this sounds like bull... it sounds to me like the guy ordered the wrong part and he's trying to get us just to forget about in and he'll just keep the money we gave him. Please help me with this cause I know you can't just put any old valve in and play around with the pads until it works... by the way, even with the pads, it still doesn't work!!! HELP!!!!!!!!!!