TubaForum.net

Do y'all have a commercial source for these or make them?

The removable valve cluster/leadpipe thing is a cool idea.

Instrument Innovations (still a good bet)
Interesting stuff here—> linky

Yamaha (meh)

Getzen/Edwards (depends on who answers the phone)
no current contact info

Kanstul (well, nope, not any more)

Conn-Selmer (less likely these days)

homemade (time-consuming, but if you have the tooling and supplies, much more satisfying)

The two large detachable braces between the outer 4th slide tube and the top bow (and two more on the other side) are an Instrument Innovations bass trombone bell brace three-piece barrell socket, some stainless steel rod, a King socketed brace foot on top, and the I.I. socket silver-soldered to some nickel silver diamonds I hand cut from an old bottom bow guard. I really wanted a socketed brace foot of nickel silver for the top, but Conn-Selmer did not make them. Anyway, I like the contrast of the various brass and silver bits against each other.

If you can blow this up, look above the outer 4th tube to the *other* 4th tube, and you will see two modified Yamaha sousaphone braces pinning the 4th slide loop to the 5th and 6th bugle branches.

This tuba had three of these Yamaha braces and an Edwards tenor trombone brace holding the inside of the valve section to the inside of the bugle, and four of the large bass trombone braces holding the outside of the valve section to the outer branches of the bugle.

It was *very* strong.

Best bet is to scrounge up parts from old Yamaha YBB 201/321 tubas. On the oldest ones (from the 1970s - early 80s), the detachable bracing has those weird threaded spinning barrels in the middle of the brace that tightens. I think those are pretty cool if you are able to find/harvest them
The later models just have the bracing that uses a screw to connect the two halves. All those models have that threaded ring union/junction that connects the mouthpipe with the valveset.

I think MouthpieceExpress carries and can order Yamaha parts if you want new ones and can't harvest or find the old parts

Here is a set of parts for Edwards trombones that you can probably buy from Getzen. Above, I noted that it depends on who answers the phone. I meant that sometimes they are willing to look up all the part numbers and diagrams and pull them from parts bins, and sometimes they are "busy".

Having stuff like this ready to go will help you a LOT with Getzen. Not that this design of brace is meant to hold an item together, but it is very bad at holding things in alignment. It clamps down, but does not do well when in shear. You always need a combination of shear and clamping braces to keep everything together *and* properly lined up, or you might one day discover that your MTS has stopped moving…

Where's that buzz coming from, dammit ?!?!

.