Airleak in second tuning slide of my Willson

[NCSharp]

Hi All!

Hope you're having wonderful fridays! I've posted a couple times on this forum before, it's usually when I run into an issue I've never encountered before, or other reasons, and today is one of the former. For a couple weeks now, I've felt an air leak on my horn, was able to narrow it down to somewhere the 2nd valve tubing, and today I finally found it. It's not enough to feel air on your hand when the second tuning slide is in all the way, but if it's pulled out even a little bit, you can feel air hitting your hand when the second valve is in use. Has anyone ever experienced this before? I'm taking it to get some small repairs this weekend, is this something I could throw in without it drastically affecting my horn's time in the shop?

Thanks,
Noah

[davewerden]

I suspect it will be a fairly fix - probably the short leg of the slide needs to be expanded slightly. But be aware that there are very few players who try to play while this slide is partway out. There is so little travel on the short leg that you won't have much seal left. I suspect if you pulled out your first valve slide so that only an equivalent amount was inserted, it would leak air too.

A heavier slide grease might help you as well, but I'd see if you tech can make the fit a little better.

[ghmerrill]

The tech should be able to just expand the inner slide a bit by using one or two expander balls. So pretty much just a couple of minutes of "work". But even then -- as Dave said -- you're looking for trouble by pulling it out any. Most euphs just can't use that "tuning slide" for actual tuning, though it's quite useful for water removal. On a tuba you CAN use the 2nd valve slide to tune, but that's because it's quite a bit (on BBb tubas, about twice as long) longer than on a euph. Even if the euph 2nd valve slide isn't pulled out at all, the sound of a 2nd valve slide hitting the floor in community band rehearsal is not particularly uncommon -- just from vibration/air pressure.