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I am SO tired of piston valves. JEEZ!

Would love an explanation with more detail.

tclements wrote: Mon May 04, 2026 3:29 pm I am SO tired of piston valves. JEEZ!

They did WHAT in your valves?!

I got a human hair between a valve and a casing on a really good tuba with really good valves, one time.

It took me a week or two to figure out what the hell was going on.

tclements wrote: Mon May 04, 2026 3:29 pm I am SO tired of piston valves. JEEZ!

Well, didn't you just solve that problem by purchasing a Miraphone Bruckner recently? Problem solved.

I don't own tens of thousands dollars worth of of honing equipment nor tens of thousands of dollars of plating equipment, and nor do I own super duper expensive lathes, but - curiously - if any of valves on my personal piston valve tubas ever had issues, they didn't have them much longer than an hour.

I wonder why that is.

I had my Miraphone 1291 for about 5 years. When I first got it, the valves would stick sometimes, even after oil and blah blah blah. Very tight tolerances.

One night, I got back home, gave it a good bath and oiled it.

Never once had problems again.

PS, I *always* brush my teeth before I play.

Nobody bothers to clean them or oil them enough to repel filth.
A large percentage of piston valve tuba owners' bottom caps are frozen, and those bottom caps are full of crap that gets washed between the valves and the casings every time the pistons are oiled... And I'm not going to repeat what I've said over and over about scale forming.

BELIEVE ME, when I tell you that I have tried EVERYTHING to keep pistons moving. Keeping my mouth clean, using proper valve oil, keeping the pistons and cylinders clean. It just SHOULD NOT be that hard.

tclements wrote: Wed May 06, 2026 8:59 am BELIEVE ME, when I tell you that I have tried EVERYTHING to keep pistons moving. Keeping my mouth clean, using proper valve oil, keeping the pistons and cylinders clean. It just SHOULD NOT be that hard.

If you've never damaged your valves, they're absolutely clean, you're certain the guides aren't dragging by being too thick in the outward dimension, you simply own a tuba (I suppose?) with crappy valves.

If it's piston valves in general, why are the piston valves on my piston valve tubas and and euphoniums trouble-free? (This even includes an old 3 valve compensating Besson with clearly worn pistons, which I almost never use.)

Just for What It's worth, more of the instruments that I play regularly are rotary instruments, but I have currently have several that are piston instruments, and the valves only hang up a little bit when I've let them sit for considerable amount of time, and - after few seconds - they're fine.

As far as German instruments, several years ago (I've since sold it) I bought a model 5450 used that originally seemed to have hopeless pistons, but I addressed the problems in about a half an hour and they were perfectly fine thereafter. I later bought some of those lightweight aftermarket pistons with the odd cut out in the middle, and it only took about 5 minutes to get those working perfectly in the same casings.

One of my currently owned piston tubas is a Holton 4/4 (one of those with a bell and bows identical to the 32-inch tall York B flats). I restored and heavily customized it with a 1990s King 2341 valve section and a 19mm bore rotor on the far side of the main slide. The pistons were still good, didn't stick, but sort of rated an A- as far as tolerances were concerned.
Someone offered me a set of those same make of aftermarket pistons (the lightweight ones with the odd cut out, yet built to fit King) which were slightly oversized (did not simply drop into the casings). That gave me an opportunity to fit those pistons into the casings and step the tolerances up to like new. Those pistons don't stick either.

Long ago, I remember using Simple Green to get all of the traces of old oils and stuff off of there first.

tclements wrote: Wed May 06, 2026 8:59 am BELIEVE ME, when I tell you that I have tried EVERYTHING to keep pistons moving. Keeping my mouth clean, using proper valve oil, keeping the pistons and cylinders clean. It just SHOULD NOT be that hard.

I forget who it was, but someone long ago on here or the other board had a hell of a time with a sticking first valve. I believe that after a ton of everything, it was discovered that one of the valve ports had a manufacturing defect or something, where something was so slightly indented or deformed you could barely find it.

What I've seen on several occasions is horns where some factory doofus soldered on a leadpipe under tension, so it deformed the 1st valve casing. You can find out if this is the case by just slightly flexing the large end of the leadpipe and see if the sticking changes for the better.

UncleBeer wrote: Wed May 06, 2026 10:54 am What I've seen on several occasions is horns where some factory doofus soldered on a leadpipe under tension, so it deformed the 1st valve casing. You can find out if this is the case by just slightly flexing the large end of the leadpipe and see if the sticking changes for the better.

The Conn stencil 11J (California Olds built) that I just finished bringing back from the dead...(repair forum)

After I managed to fit 1980s oversized Bach pistons into casings 1and 3, and got them working flawlessly (struggling with repair tools to do machine work ), even though I painstakingly mounted the valve section back on the instrument striving for no tension anywhere, there still ended up being a little bit (solder joints cool, and move by three or four thousandths of an inch - which is enough to mess things up.) It happened when I soldered the last joint together - which was the cross brace for the outside slide tubes for the main tuning slide... EVEN THOUGH I moved the adjustable brace foot up to the tube, rather than pulling it up to the tube... A little bit of the same stuff also happened with the mouth pipe as you described.

Later, they started sticking again, and I found that garbage from the bottom caps (which I had not yet cleaned) had already begun to migrate between the valves and casings. (At least that was an easy fix.)
When I do piston fitting or repair, I always flood the instrument with oil afterwards and mess around with it for at least two or three days to make sure that any garbage that I didn't find at first finds its way to the valve casings. I just don't want people calling me on the phone and telling me that their newly-repaited valves are sticking.

Oh yeah:
Approximately 100% of the time when people tell me they REALLY cleaned their valves, they did NOT, as the knuckles leading into the valve casings and the short knuckles connecting the valve casings are almost always full of garbage which gets picked up by valve oil, whereby oiling the valves causes the valves to stick, because it washes that crap in between the valves and the casings.

Stuff has to be just right, and (just one more thing) tubas should not be carried around by their slide tubes. Pulling on those tubes with 20 to 30 lb of weight probably won't move them and pull on valve casings, but it could.

bloke wrote: Wed May 06, 2026 12:09 pm Stuff has to be just right, and (just one more thing) tubas should not be carried around by their slide tubes. Pulling on those tubes with 20 to 30 lb of weight probably won't move them and pull on valve casings, but it could.

That's a good way to pop a solder joint, too.

About this time last year, when my son was starting out (he was 9 at the time), I told him to always pick up the horn from the thickest part possible (bottom bow, upper bow, or bell).

His reply: "Well duh. It would probably break if I picked it up by the small parts."

He's a good kid.

@bloke, you mentioned not having thousands worth of machine tools... Be on the lookout for an automotive machine shop closing up. You might be able to pick up a pin fitter. Oberloh has one. He seemed put out when I told him I'd spend many, many hours standing in front of one fitting piston pins. Like it was some secret that piston valves can be fitted that way and I had found him out.

1 Ton Tommy wrote: Thu May 07, 2026 1:45 pm @bloke, you mentioned not having thousands worth of machine tools... Be on the lookout for an automotive machine shop closing up. You might be able to pick up a pin fitter. Oberloh has one. He seemed put out when I told him I'd spend many, many hours standing in front of one fitting piston pins. Like it was some secret that piston valves can be fitted that way and I had found him out.

GTK...
I might be even more interested were I 25 years younger.

tclements wrote: Mon May 04, 2026 3:29 pm I am SO tired of piston valves. JEEZ!

Would love to hear your thoughts on the new Bruckner with the new 5th valve layout!