Posted by Joe S. on July 05, 2000 at 19:29:27:
In Reply to: Adding a valve posted by Mike F on July 05, 2000 at 16:11:35:
Sonia at U.M.I. would probably sell your repairman all of the parts required to make a virtually factory-looking 4th piston add-on on your King instrument.
Without clicking on your Conn pic link, most all of those had a smaller bore than what you might easily find laying around. I recently did an extremely successful #4 casing add-on to a standard Conn front-action ("long" action) .734" 3 valve valveset. I used another #2 casing just like the one in the middle of the cluster...It layed in perfectly, and all I had to change were the knuckles coming out of the "new" #4 casing which service the slide tubing. You might be able to splice a .734" bore #2 on to your Conn Eb smaller bore 1-2-3 set if you don't mind a sudden step up in bore size (which seems to be trendy these days, anyway). If you want a PERFECT match for your Conn, you might watch eBay long enough to find a VERY distressed Conn Eb sousaphone. The #2 casing and piston from one of those sousaphones should splice on to your tuba quite nicely as a #4...Again, I didn't look at your pic.
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Boy, all of that junk that I just wrote sure looks like techno-nerd gobbledegoop. I hope some of it makes sense.