NEW YORK: Need Repair Shop Recommendation - Hudson Valley Area

[jhfitzsimmons]

I just received a new main tuning slide for my euphonium and it needs to be custom fitted to the horn (one side is too tight to insert). I'm not even sure what's involved in this. Does anyone have a recommended shop in the Hudson Valley New York area that could perform this for me?

[John Morgan]

Are you sure you got the right slide? Seems if it was a replacement for an original slide, it should fit. Not fitting tells me it is for another horn with different bore sizes.

[jhfitzsimmons]

I'm pretty sure, I got it to be a direct replacement and it came from the same manufacturer and dealer as I got my euphonium from. The larger side of the slide fits nicely, the smaller diameter side is just too tight, as if it needs to be polished down a fair bit. When I told them it did not fit correctly, they noted that as each horn is made the slides are fitted to it, and so they are not surprised by this. I don't really know, but it seems to make sense to me. I just need to find someone I can trust to finish this off.

[ghmerrill]

I don't find this to be surprising at all. In order to provide a slide that is an immediate "insert and play" slide on any horn, it would have to be made with tolerances that would be much too loose on a number of horns. The slide is likely to need at least some lapping and MAY need some mild alignment to fit a particular instrument. This is all very simple and any reasonable repair tech should be able to do it in a few minutes at very little cost.

[John Morgan]

Hmmm, I am pretty sure that most horns, particularly mass produced horns, are made with slides that would be interchangeable between the models that are the same. I know on my Edwards trombone (a very high end horn), for example, I can order a tuning slide from the factory of a different brass material or different radius, and it will fit perfectly. Usually the only issues on slides is their "parallelism", which is the need for the two lengths to be parallel in order to fit easily in the horn.

[ghmerrill]

Yes, I expect that will happen a lot of the time as well -- especially if you pay the cost for something like an Edwards trombone. But that's all pretty much speculation. And I would not expect the issue of parallelism to be a common one. I'd expect that only in the case of an inaccurate assembly during manufacturing, or in the case where the customer's horn had been bumped or twisted in some way.

But in terms of how well an inner tube slides into an outer tube, you are dealing with THOUSANDTHS of an inch of difference. You CAN'T, for example, manufacture "replace and play" pistons. They always require (or should require) lapping. Tuning slides aren't quite as bad because the tolerances aren't as tight.

If, as the original posting suggests, one side of the slide is "too tight to be inserted" (meaning it is too tight when you try to just insert this one side -- and not both at the same time), this is a clear indication that lapping is needed -- and not surprising. Some parts are easily interchangeable (valve caps, piston stems, etc.), but these involve much more forgiving tolerances. If you can insert each side independently, but not insert both simultaneously, then that speaks to either a lack of parallelism or to a dimensional mismatch between the crook and the outer sleeves -- which I agree would be pretty unusual.

In this case, it appears that minor lapping needs to be done -- which I maintain is not surprising. There were a few slides on my Cerveny tuba that were VERY tight and I needed to lap just to make theme useable. On the other hand, some Yamaha euphoniums (and faithful clones of them!!) have a reputation for having the second valve tuning slide fit so loosely that it often falls out during playing -- unless you run an expander ball into it to widen the tube a couple thousandths of an inch.

Personally, I'd prefer to have slides that are a little too tight and that I can carefully lap to "perfection" than ones that work well when I get them and then loosen up over time so I have to keep putting heavier grease on them or have them expanded.

[John Morgan]

Not speculation at all. I spoke with Christian Griego of Edwards who told me that slides are made to fit interchangeably with the same models. By the actual machines and tools that make them. And that with his many visits to Yamaha, they do the exact same thing. And some of the Edwards slides fit Getzen products perfectly (by design). Probably killing a dead horse here, but slides are interchangeable, unless the manufacturing process is shoddy.

[davewerden]

...but slides are interchangeable, unless the manufacturing process is shoddy.

OR unless the specs have changed. For example, a manufacturer may have decided to make them fit tighter expecting to hone them in at the factory. If the legs are plated, the plating thickness could change from batch to batch, either intentionally or unintentionally. The 2nd valve slide is a great example because its short leg makes it so vulnerable to fit changes. On a LOT of horns from various manufacturers I find a sample-to-sample difference in how tightly that slide fits. So there is bound to be a similar variation in the longer slides. If you take the variance of a tight 2nd slide and apply it to a tuning slide, the tuning slide could indeed be way too tight. Obviously manufacturers WANT to make them as consistent as possible for several reasons.

Or in some cases the actual size may change slightly for design reasons. I found the latter example when I ordered a set of slides for my original Adams. They had a different distance between the two legs. They had to send me another set with the old specs because they had widened the spacing slightly (perhaps 1/8" or more) in newer models. (I don't think that is the case here, though.)

Yamaha horns (for example) are made with a lot of machine actions, good quality control, and much less hand work; other brands may have more hand work in the process, and that would introduce opportunities for a little variation.

[jhfitzsimmons]

Thanks Gary. Your information on the ease of the repair is exactly what I needed to know.

[dsurkin]

I just received a new main tuning slide for my euphonium and it needs to be custom fitted to the horn (one side is too tight to insert). I'm not even sure what's involved in this. Does anyone have a recommended shop in the Hudson Valley New York area that could perform this for me?

In the
Lower Hudson Valley, there's Ardsley Music. I used them for valve work on my Mack, and my wife uses them for repairs on the instruments used by the NYU music therapy center.