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Thread: Heavy bottom cap

  1. #1

    Heavy bottom cap

    Just wondering if someone has already tried those heavy bottom caps http://www.heavybottomcaps.co.uk/

    I have a UK prestige 2051, do you think that it would improve my sound?

    Thanks

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    West Palm Beach, FL
    Posts
    3,853
    I think a heavy bottom valve cap on the 4th valve may help. Maybe because it's 'hanging out there in the breeze' so to speak with little mass. It sure helped my Yamaha 641, but not so much on my current horn - M5050. It may depend on the horn itself.

    See this discussion thread for more info. There's 3 pgs worth with some pictures:
    Heavy Valve Caps for Euphonium:
    Rick Floyd
    Miraphone 5050 - Warburton BJ / RF mpc
    YEP-641S (recently sold)
    Doug Elliott - 102 rim; I-cup; I-9 shank


    "Always play with a good tone, never louder than lovely, never softer than supported." - author unknown.
    Symphonic Band of the Palm Beaches
    El Cumbanchero (Raphael Hernandez, arr. Naohiro Iwai)
    Chorale and Shaker Dance
    (John Zdechlik)

  3. If you want to see what heavy valve caps will do for resonance on a particular horn, take a coin or washer of the proper diameter where it fits on the bottom of the valve casing without interfering with the cap threads, and place it in your bottom valve cap. Or try two, if you have enough threads. The principal is like the LefreQue plates: add mass at a strategic spot that damps unwanted vibrations that interfere with the anti-nodes and cause "stuffy" or "dead" notes. I don't recommend leaving coins in the valve caps unless you drill a hole in the coins for the same reasons bottom valve caps have holes. Finally, it depends on the horn. I have horns that do not need extra mass. I have horns that need one. I have horns that may benefit from LefreQue plates instead. I have horns where I have actually wrapped a piece of golfer's lead tape around a point that had a really bad "dead" note to damp the vibration interfering with an anti-node.

    The point: it is all trial-and-error depending on the horn and the player, and each "solution" is individual. Nothing can be generalized, except possibly this: diminishing returns. Since mass damps vibration, too much mass can damp too much vibration and decrease responsiveness. I have found that out as well. On one cornet I used to have, one dime in the 3rd valve bottom cap opened up some stuffiness. Two dimes went the other way and impeded desired resonance and response.

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